Alfred Hartley (11 April 1879 – 9 October 1918) was a

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

er who played for

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...

. He was killed in action during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Hartley was a solid, defensive right-handed opening batsman from the West Indies who had a fairly brief career in English county cricket. He made his first-class debut in 1907, made 1,000 runs at a respectable average in both 1908 and 1909, but only really came to the fore in 1910 when, with 1,585 runs at an average of nearly 37 runs per innings, he was selected for the

Gentlemen v Players Gentlemen v Players was a long-running series of English first-class cricket matches. Two matches were played in 1806, but the fixture was not played again until 1819. It became an annual event, usually played at least twice each season, exc ...

matches at

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and

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. He did little in the first match, but in the second, though scoring only 24 and 35, he impressed the editor of

Wisden ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', or simply ''Wisden'', colloquially the Bible of Cricket, is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. The description "bible of cricket" was first used in the 1930s by Alec Waugh in a ...

sufficiently to be named in the 1911 edition as one of the five

Wisden Cricketers of the Year The ''Wisden'' Cricketers of the Year are cricketers selected for the honour by the annual publication ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', based primarily on their "influence on the previous English season". The award began in 1889 with the naming ...

. His big innings of the season was 234 for Lancashire against the very weak

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team at

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, and he also scored a century in the return fixture at

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. In 1911, Hartley's performance fell away significantly: he failed to reach 1,000 runs and scored no centuries. He played only a handful of matches in 1912, none the following year and just one in 1914. During World War I he served as a Lieutenant in the

Royal Garrison Artillery The Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA) was formed in 1899 as a distinct arm of the British Army's Royal Regiment of Artillery serving alongside the other two arms of the Regiment, the Royal Field Artillery (RFA) and the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) ...

. He was killed in action in October 1918 aged 39 near

Maissemy Maissemy is a commune in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. Administration Population See also *Communes of the Aisne department The following is a list of the 799 communes in the French department of Ai ...

in France and is buried at Vadencourt British Cemetery, Maissemy. He left a widow.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hartley, Alfred 1879 births 1918 deaths English cricketers Lancashire cricketers Wisden Cricketers of the Year British military personnel killed in World War I Gentlemen cricketers