The sad death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II means that after seventy years there is a new monarch on the throne. It also reminds cricket followers that a huge number of top cricketers played their entire careers in the Elizabethan Age. Great players like Ian Botham, Ted Dexter, Geoffrey Boycott, Bob Willis, Rachael Heyhoe-Flint and Alec Stewart, not to mention overseas giants like Sachin Tendulkar, Malcolm Marshall, Gary Sobers, Richard Hadlee, Kumar Sangakkara, Dennis Lillee, Shane Warne and Graeme Pollock all played their entire careers, or at least every time they came to England, to the strains of God Save The Queen. In Kent, even many of the greatest, such as Derek Underwood, Alan Knott, Chris Tavaré or John Shepherd shook only the Queen’s hand when they played a Test at Lord’s.
But from now it changes. All those who play in the last few games of this season will have played under two monarchs, for the first time since the last player active in 1951 retired from first-class cricket. But it was not always thus. Go back to before the war, and almost any cricketer who played over a career of around ten seasons will have played under at least two monarchs. Ben Stokes, incidentally, joins Donald Carr as the only men to be captaining England in a Test when the monarch died, but at least Stokes won the Oval Test (thanks in no small part to Zak Crawley’s contribution), while Carr’s side lost the 5th Test to India, at Chennai in February 1952, by an innings and 8 runs (Kent’s Fred Ridgway 1-47 and a pair).
I have found several Kent players who played under three sovereigns, for example Bill Murray-Wood, who made his debut in 1936 shortly after the death of King George V, but he played in the reigns of Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II. Leslie Ames played from 1926 to 1951 (George V, Edward VIII and George VI) and if only he’d played even once in 1952, he’d have played under four monarchs. Bill Ashdown, Bryan Valentine and Leslie Todd all played under the same three kings as Ames, as did Alan Watt, who only played for the county between 1929 and 1939. Lord Harris also played under three monarchs, Queen Victoria until 1900, Edward VII until 1909 and under George V to 1911 when he played his final first-class game. Jack Mason, Punter Humphreys and Arthur Fielder are also among the many players whose career stretched across the reigns of those three, as anybody who was active between 1900, Queen Victoria’s final summer, and 1910, King George V’s first summer on the throne, would qualify. King Edward VII died on 6 May 1910, and Kent’s first match of that season, against MCC at Lord’s, was cancelled as a result. So all the games they played that year were in the fifth Georgian era.
I tried to find any cricketers whose playing career stretched from 1819 (under George III) through to the second half of the summer of 1837, when Victoria succeeded to the throne, as they would have played under four monarchs – George III, George IV, William IV and Victoria, but despite consulting Derek Carlaw’s definitive A to Z of Kent Cricketers, I have not found anybody. The nearest were the Kentish legend Ned Wenman, who played under three monarchs from 1825 to 1854, and the grandly named Percyvall Dyke, related to the various Hart Dykes who played for Kent in Victorian times. Percyvall Dyke played his cricket between 1822 and late 1837, so did play under three sovereigns, but not a fourth.
There are, however, three Kent cricketers who played their cricket under four different sovereigns. They are, of course, among the greats in our county’s history, as the lengths of their careers would suggest.
The first is Frank Woolley – who else? – who played from 1906 to 1937, thus playing under Edward VII (to 1910), George V (1910-1936), Edward VIII in 1936, and George VI from 1937 until Woolley retired at the end of 1938. The other two are players of great distinction whose careers both began in 1932 and ended in 1957, meaning they played during the reigns of George V, Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II. These two giants of Kent cricket history are the opening bat Arthur Fagg and leg-spinner Doug Wright. Fagg played 414 games for the county and Wright 397. Fagg is currently the fifth highest runscorer of all time for Kent, while Wright is the fourth highest wicket-taker. Wright became the first professional to be appointed county captain, while Fagg for many years held the record of being the only man to score two double centuries in a first-class match. Both played far fewer Tests for England than their talents warranted, but there are many people on that list.
What are the chances of anybody playing today extending his career to the time of a fourth king for queen? Well, anybody who has played at both ends of this summer has already played under two monarchs, and King Charles is 73. All the same, to play under four crowned heads would mean playing on until the time when Prince George becomes king. He is only nine years old and his father is 40. Barring terrible happenings in the royal household, it seems very unlikely that anybody playing today will join Woolley, Fagg and Wright on the somewhat niche list of Kent players who have played for the county under four monarchs. For the sake of the royal family, I hope I am proved right, although I fear I will not be around to check.