Benjamin Walter Bellamy (22 April 1891 – 22 December 1985) was a professional cricketer who spent his entire career at

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...

. His career spanned 16 years, retiring in 1935 by which time he had played 351 first-class matches, but returning in a crisis for two games two seasons later.

Career

In his youth, Bellamy focused chiefly on

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

, at which he was good enough to play for Northampton Town as an inside forward. Bellamy joined the ground staff of

, which shared its ground with the soccer club, in 1912, but his powers as a cricketer ripened very slowly indeed. He was denied a regular place in the county team until 1922, due to the

First World War 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 ...

and the long career of

Walter Buswell Walter Gerard Buswell (November 6, 1907 — October 16, 1991), was a Canadian ice hockey defenceman who played eight seasons in the National Hockey League between 1932 and 1940 for the Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Canadiens The Montreal ...

. By this time he was thirty-one years old. Bellamy then remained the first choice

wicket-keeper The wicket-keeper in the sport of cricket is the player on the fielding side who stands behind the wicket or stumps being watchful of the batsman and ready to take a catch, stump the batsman out and run out a batsman when occasion arises. Th ...

for 14 seasons, making his last appearance for the county as a batsman with Ken James having become the preferred wicket keeper. He was a most unusual wicket-keeper - along with Clyde Walcott probably the tallest to regularly play this position - and his clumsy build suggested a complete lack of style behind the stumps. His debut behind the stumps came in one of the most remarkable county matches of all time. When Northamptonshire played

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

Northampton Northampton () is a market town and civil parish in the East Midlands of England, on the River Nene, north-west of London and south-east of Birmingham. The county town of Northamptonshire, Northampton is one of the largest towns in England; ...

in 1920 the match produced 1,475 runs (a championship record which stood for nearly seventy years), including a

century A century is a period of 100 years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word ''century'' comes from the Latin ''centum'', meaning ''one hundred''. ''Century'' is sometimes abbreviated as c. A centennial or ...

in around 35 minutes by

Percy Fender Percy George Herbert Fender (22 August 1892 – 15 June 1985) was an English cricketer who played 13 Tests for his country and was captain of Surrey between 1921 and 1931. An all-rounder, he was a middle-order batsman who bowled mainly l ...

. Bellamy's first

victim Victim(s) or The Victim may refer to: People * Crime victim * Victim, in psychotherapy, a posited role in the Karpman drama triangle model of transactional analysis Films and television * ''The Victim'' (1916 film), an American silent film by t ...

was

Jack Hobbs Sir John Berry Hobbs (16 December 1882– 21 December 1963), always known as Jack Hobbs, was an English professional cricketer who played for Surrey from 1905 to 1934 and for England in 61 Test matches between 1908 and 1930. Known as "The Mast ...

, and he conceded only 11 byes as Surrey totalled 619-5 declared and 120–2. Initially he was not regarded as a serious batsman, but as early as 1922 Bellamy scored his career best batting total of 168 against an admittedly weak

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...

bowling attack. Three years later, after Northamptonshire lost eight wickets for 216 he put on 93 with Phillip Wright for the ninth wicket and with fellow Wollaston boy Vernon Murdin 148 runs for the last wicket against

Glamorgan , HQ = Cardiff , Government = Glamorgan County Council (1889–1974) , Origin= , Code = GLA , CodeName = Chapman code , Replace = * West Glamorgan * Mid Glamorgan * South Glamorgan , Motto ...

, which is still a county record. Bellamy reached his peak in 1928, when he scored 1,116 runs with two centuries, but injury and age gradually began to catch up with him in the 1930s. He missed the last eighteen games of 1931Caine, C. Stewart (editor);

John Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack ''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 ...

; Sixty-Ninth edition (1932) pp. 443-444. and never reached the same records he had in the previous decade during his last four seasons with the side. Ben Bellamy was well regarded by his county, and as the team were struggling around the time of his career, his competence in cricket was very welcomed. Many famed him for his routine of leaving his motorbike at Wellingborough train station en route to away fixtures. After his retirement, Bellamy spent 22 years as the coach at

Wellingborough School Wellingborough School is a co-educational day independent school in the market town of Wellingborough in Northamptonshire. It was established in 1595 and is one of the oldest schools in the country. The school today consists of a Prep school ...

. When he died in 1985, aged 94, he was the oldest surviving County Championship cricketer.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bellamy, Benjamin 1891 births English cricketers Northamptonshire cricketers 1985 deaths Northampton Town F.C. players Men's association football forwards English men's footballers Wicket-keepers People from Wollaston, Northamptonshire Cricketers from Northamptonshire