Monty Cranfield
Encyclopedia
Lionel Montague Cranfield (29 August 1909 – 18 November 1993) played first-class
cricket
for Gloucestershire
between 1934 and 1951. He was born in Bristol
and died at Stockport
, Greater Manchester
.
, who played first-class cricket for Gloucestershire and Somerset
between 1903 and 1922, and the nephew of Beaumont Cranfield
, who played for Somerset from 1897 to 1908 and who died just months before Monty was born.
and off break
bowler and a right-handed lower-order batsman who played fairly regularly for Gloucestershire both before and after the Second World War without ever really being certain of his place in the team. As a spin bowler, he coincided for much of his career with off-spinner Tom Goddard
and then later with the slow left-arm spin bowler Sam Cook
, both Test
players and inevitable first-choice bowlers. As a result, he never achieved 50 wickets in a single English season, and nor did he ever bowl as many as 500 overs in a single season. As a batsman, though he often made useful runs, he had only one season, when he was 37 years old, when he was anywhere close to a front-line batsman.
of 16.05 and taking 23 wickets at an average
of 37.60. His first five-wicket haul came at Bristol against a Yorkshire
team weakened by Test calls; he took five for 58 in the first innings, but scarcely bowled in the second innings as Reg Sinfield
and Charles Parker
shared the wickets between them. In 1935, Cranfield was awarded his county cap, though his season's figures were poor: 294 runs at an average of just 8.16 and only 10 wickets all season. He did, however, produce his first 50 in first-class cricket: an innings of exactly 50 against Derbyshire
at Bristol. The batting got no better across the 1930s, and though Wisden
noted in its review of Gloucestershire's 1936 season that "[Cranfield's] slow leg-breaks were often useful", the 35 wickets he took in that season were his best return in pre-war cricket. By 1939, he was playing mostly for Gloucestershire's second team in the Minor Counties, though he returned for the game against Cambridge University
in June 1939 and took 10 wickets in the match for 88 runs, including a first-innings return of five for 33 which was at that stage his best in first-class cricket. Wisden's report that Cranfield was "flighting and spinning the ball from the off" suggests that he was bowling off spin at this stage.
The 1947 season, when Gloucestershire chased Middlesex
hard for the County Championship
, was Cranfield best as a batsman by some distance: he made three scores of more than 50 to add to his solitary effort in 1935. Against Cambridge University, he made 67 and helped Jack Crapp
put on 172 for the eighth wicket. He made 59 against Sussex
. And then in the last game of the season, against Essex
at Bristol, he scored 90, the top score of a high-scoring match. In the season as whole, Cranfield scored 660 runs at an average of 26.48, though in a season in which Goddard took more than 200 wickets, he took only 29 and bowled only just over 300 overs. The following season, 1948, was less successful and Cranfield's highest score was just 37; he did, however, take 41 wickets at a respectable average of 29.24 with one five-wicket haul, and he played in 27 matches duringt the season, the most in any single season of first-class cricket. In 1949, though, he lost his place in the side and he retired at the end of the season.
From 1950 to 1952, Cranfield acted as scorer for Gloucestershire. In May 1951, he returned for one final first-class match against Somerset at Taunton.
First-class cricket
First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...
cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
for Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire County Cricket Club
Gloucestershire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Gloucestershire. Its limited overs team is called the Gloucestershire Gladiators....
between 1934 and 1951. He was born in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
and died at Stockport
Stockport
Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on elevated ground southeast of Manchester city centre, at the point where the rivers Goyt and Tame join and create the River Mersey. Stockport is the largest settlement in the metropolitan borough of the same name...
, Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 2.6 million. It encompasses one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom and comprises ten metropolitan boroughs: Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan, and the...
.
Family
Monty Cranfield was the son of Lionel CranfieldLionel Cranfield (cricketer)
Lionel Lord Cranfield played first-class cricket for Gloucestershire and Somerset between 1903 and 1922. He was born in Brixton, London and died at Sale, Cheshire....
, who played first-class cricket for Gloucestershire and Somerset
Somerset County Cricket Club
Somerset County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Somerset...
between 1903 and 1922, and the nephew of Beaumont Cranfield
Beaumont Cranfield
Beaumont Cranfield was a first-class cricketer who made 125 appearances for Somerset from 1897 until his death in 1909. A slow left-arm orthodox bowler, he took 563 wickets for his county. At his prime, he could impart strong curve on the ball that meant he could place almost all his fielders on...
, who played for Somerset from 1897 to 1908 and who died just months before Monty was born.
Cricket career
Monty Cranfield was a right-arm leg breakLeg break
A leg break is a type of delivery in the sport of cricket. A delivery of a right-handed leg spin bowler. Leg breaks are also colloquially known as leggies or wrist spinners, as the wrist is the body part which is primarily used to impart spin on the ball, as opposed to the fingers in the case of...
and off break
Off break
Off break is a type of delivery in the sport of cricket. It is the attacking delivery of an off spin bowler. Off breaks are known as off spinners....
bowler and a right-handed lower-order batsman who played fairly regularly for Gloucestershire both before and after the Second World War without ever really being certain of his place in the team. As a spin bowler, he coincided for much of his career with off-spinner Tom Goddard
Tom Goddard
Tom Goddard was the fifth highest wicket taker in first-class cricket....
and then later with the slow left-arm spin bowler Sam Cook
Sam Cook
Cecil "Sam" Cook , was an English cricketer, who played for Gloucestershire and in one Test match for England.-Life and career:...
, both Test
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...
players and inevitable first-choice bowlers. As a result, he never achieved 50 wickets in a single English season, and nor did he ever bowl as many as 500 overs in a single season. As a batsman, though he often made useful runs, he had only one season, when he was 37 years old, when he was anywhere close to a front-line batsman.
Pre-war cricket
Cranfield first appeared for Gloucestershire in 1934 and played in 17 first-class matches that season, making 305 runs at an averageBatting average
Batting average is a statistic in both cricket and baseball that measures the performance of cricket batsmen and baseball hitters. The two statistics are related in that baseball averages are directly descended from the concept of cricket averages.- Cricket :...
of 16.05 and taking 23 wickets at an average
Bowling average
Bowling average is a statistic measuring the performance of bowlers in the sport of cricket.A bowler's bowling average is defined as the total number of runs conceded by the bowlers divided by the number of wickets taken by the bowler, so the lower the average the better. It is similar to earned...
of 37.60. His first five-wicket haul came at Bristol against a Yorkshire
Yorkshire County Cricket Club
Yorkshire County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Yorkshire as one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure....
team weakened by Test calls; he took five for 58 in the first innings, but scarcely bowled in the second innings as Reg Sinfield
Reg Sinfield
Reginald Albert Sinfield was an Gloucestershire cricketer of the 1920s and 1930s....
and Charles Parker
Charlie Parker (cricketer)
Charles Warrington Leonard "Charlie" Parker was an English cricketer, who stands as the third highest wicket taker in the history of first-class cricket, behind Wilfred Rhodes and Tich Freeman.-Life and career:Parker took no serious attention to cricket in his childhood, preferring to concentrate...
shared the wickets between them. In 1935, Cranfield was awarded his county cap, though his season's figures were poor: 294 runs at an average of just 8.16 and only 10 wickets all season. He did, however, produce his first 50 in first-class cricket: an innings of exactly 50 against Derbyshire
Derbyshire County Cricket Club
Derbyshire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the England and Wales domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Derbyshire...
at Bristol. The batting got no better across the 1930s, and though Wisden
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom...
noted in its review of Gloucestershire's 1936 season that "[Cranfield's] slow leg-breaks were often useful", the 35 wickets he took in that season were his best return in pre-war cricket. By 1939, he was playing mostly for Gloucestershire's second team in the Minor Counties, though he returned for the game against Cambridge University
Cambridge University Cricket Club
Cambridge University Cricket Club is a first-class cricket team. It now plays all but one of its first-class cricket matches as part of the Cambridge University Centre of Cricketing Excellence , which includes Anglia Ruskin University...
in June 1939 and took 10 wickets in the match for 88 runs, including a first-innings return of five for 33 which was at that stage his best in first-class cricket. Wisden's report that Cranfield was "flighting and spinning the ball from the off" suggests that he was bowling off spin at this stage.
Postwar cricket
When first-class cricket resumed after the Second World War in the 1946 season, Sinfield had retired and Goddard was 45 years old. But though that gave Cranfield a more reliable place in the Gloucestershire side, he did not do much more bowling than before, as Sam Cook emerged as a slow left-arm spin bowler to partner Goddard. In the match against Cambridge University at Gloucester, however, Cranfield took the bowling honours, with eight for 45 from his off breaks in the first Cambridge innings and five for 9 as the university was dismissed for just 34 in the second innings; Cranfield's match figures were 13 wickets for 54 runs and both the first innings and the match figures were the best of his career. The other seven Cambridge wickets in the match were taken by Cook at a cost of 54 runs also. Those 13 wickets took him to a season total of 47 wickets at the for-him low average of 20.44.The 1947 season, when Gloucestershire chased Middlesex
Middlesex County Cricket Club
Middlesex County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Middlesex. It was announced in February 2009 that Middlesex changed their limited overs name from the Middlesex Crusaders, to the...
hard for the County Championship
County Championship
The County Championship is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales...
, was Cranfield best as a batsman by some distance: he made three scores of more than 50 to add to his solitary effort in 1935. Against Cambridge University, he made 67 and helped Jack Crapp
Jack Crapp
John "Jack" Frederick Crapp was an English cricketer, who played first-class cricket for Gloucestershire between 1936 and 1956, and played for England on tour in the winter of 1948-49....
put on 172 for the eighth wicket. He made 59 against Sussex
Sussex County Cricket Club
Sussex County Cricket Club is the oldest of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Sussex. The club was founded as a successor to Brighton Cricket Club which was a representative of the county of Sussex as a...
. And then in the last game of the season, against Essex
Essex County Cricket Club
Essex County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Essex. Its limited overs team is called the Essex Eagles, their team colours this season are blue.The club plays most of its home games...
at Bristol, he scored 90, the top score of a high-scoring match. In the season as whole, Cranfield scored 660 runs at an average of 26.48, though in a season in which Goddard took more than 200 wickets, he took only 29 and bowled only just over 300 overs. The following season, 1948, was less successful and Cranfield's highest score was just 37; he did, however, take 41 wickets at a respectable average of 29.24 with one five-wicket haul, and he played in 27 matches duringt the season, the most in any single season of first-class cricket. In 1949, though, he lost his place in the side and he retired at the end of the season.
From 1950 to 1952, Cranfield acted as scorer for Gloucestershire. In May 1951, he returned for one final first-class match against Somerset at Taunton.