William Henry Skitch (31 August 1860 – 13 July 1944) was a New Zealand
cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...
er. He played two
first-class matches for
Otago
Otago (, ; mi, Ōtākou ) is a region of New Zealand located in the southern half of the South Island administered by the Otago Regional Council. It has an area of approximately , making it the country's second largest local government reg ...
during the 1883–84 season.
Skitch was born at
Bendigo
Bendigo ( ) is a city in Victoria, Australia, located in the Bendigo Valley near the geographical centre of the state and approximately north-west of Melbourne, the state capital.
As of 2019, Bendigo had an urban population of 100,991, makin ...
in Australia and was educated at Bendigo School. After moving to New Zealand he was prominent in Otago cricket as a player, administrator and umpire for 34 years until he moved to
Auckland for business reasons in 1907.
[McCarron A (2010) ''New Zealand Cricketers 1863/64–2010'', p. 121. Cardiff: The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. ]
Available online
at the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. Retrieved 5 June 2023.) He
umpired seven first-class matches, six of them at the
Carisbrook ground in Dunedin, between 1898 and 1903. He was elected a life member of the Dunedin Cricket Club, of which he was one of the founders, in 1901. He also won prizes as a professional sprinter and was a member of the Dunedin fire brigade teams that won competitions around New Zealand.
Skitch married Ellen Matilda Mariner in Dunedin in November 1881. She died at their home in
Grey Lynn, Auckland, in May 1938.
He moved to live with his son in
Manurewa, and died in July 1944, aged 83.
[
]
References
External links
*
1860 births
1944 deaths
New Zealand cricketers
New Zealand cricket umpires
Otago cricketers
New Zealand male sprinters
Cricketers from Bendigo
19th-century New Zealand sportspeople
{{NewZealand-cricket-bio-1860s-stub