Brian Stanley Boshier (6 March 1932 – 2 September 2009) was an English

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 who played

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 ...

for

Leicestershire County Cricket Club Leicestershire County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Leicestershire. It has also been representative of the count ...

between 1953 and 1964. Boshier, a very tall right arm

seam bowler Seam bowling is a bowling technique in cricket whereby the ball is deliberately bowled on to its seam, to cause a random deviation when the ball bounces. Practitioners are known as ''seam bowlers'' or seamers. Seam bowling is generally classed ...

, took 510 wickets in his first-class cricket career at an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

of 23 runs per wicket. He was accurate in length and when conditions were helpful he used all of his 196 centimetres (6 feet 5 inches) to extract steep bounce. Boshier took five wickets in an innings 23 times and recorded his best figures, 8/45, against

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

in 1957, besides also taking

ten wickets in a match In cricket, a ten-wicket haul occurs when a bowler takes ten wickets in either a single innings or across both innings of a two-innings match. The phrase ten wickets in a match is also used. Taking ten wickets in a match at Lord's earns the bowle ...

against

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 ...

in 1960. Boshier took 108 wickets in 1958, the year he was awarded his

county cap In sport, a cap is a player's appearance in a game at international level. The term dates from the practice in the United Kingdom of awarding a cap to every player in an international match of rugby football and association football. In the ea ...

, and the same number, 108, in 1961, when he finished second in the English national bowling averages for the season, but failed so badly against the Australians that he was never considered for representative honours. The following year, a succession of injuries limited Boshier to ten games, and he never recovered from these setbacks, being released by Leicestershire at the end of 1964. A "rabbit" with no pretensions to batting ability, Boshier scored just 579 runs at an

of 4.32. Only once, against

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

in 1957, did he even reach 20 in an innings. In 1955 Boshier played his first nine innings without even scoring a run, which equalled a record set by John Candler in 1894 and 1895 before being previously equalled by

Tom Goddard Thomas William John Goddard (1 October 1900 – 22 May 1966) was an English cricketer and the fifth-highest wicket taker in first-class cricket. Biography Born 1 October 1900 in Gloucester, Goddard joined Gloucestershire in 1922 as a fast bow ...

in 1923 and Seymour Clark’s infamous 1930 stint with Somerset.Webber, Roy; ''The Playfair Book of Cricket Records''; p. 317. Published 1951 by Playfair Books. Between August 1957 and July 1959 Boshier played fifty-two innings without reaching double figures. He was born at

Leicester Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands. The city l ...

and died on 2 September 2009 at the age of 77 at

Masham Masham ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the Harrogate district of North Yorkshire, England. It had a population of 1,205 at the 2011 census. Etymology In Wensleydale, on the western bank of the River Ure, the name derives from the An ...

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Boshier, Brian 1932 births 2009 deaths Cricketers from Leicester Leicestershire cricketers English cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers