Charles Harold Titchmarsh (18 February 1881 – 23 May 1930) 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 active in

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 ...

from 1920 to 1928, but was mostly associated with

minor counties cricket The National Counties, known as the Minor Counties before 2020, are the cricketing counties of England and Wales that do not have first-class status. The game is administered by the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), which comes unde ...

where he played for

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

Early life

Born at

Royston, Hertfordshire Royston is a town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the North Hertfordshire, District of North Hertfordshire and county of Hertfordshire in England. It is situated on the Prime meridian (Greenwich), Greenwich Meridian, which brush ...

, Titchmarsh was educated at the Nonconformist College at

Bishop's Stortford Bishop's Stortford is a historic market town in Hertfordshire, England, just west of the M11 motorway on the county boundary with Essex, north-east of central London, and by rail from Liverpool Street station. Stortford had an estimated po ...

, where he spent two years in the cricket XI. He made his debut for Hertfordshire in the 1900

Minor Counties Championship The NCCA 3 Day Championship (previously the Minor Counties Cricket Championship) is a season-long competition in England and Wales that is contested by the members of the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), the so-called national cou ...

against

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and North ...

Fenner's Fenner's is Cambridge University Cricket Club's ground. History Cambridge University Cricket Club had previously played at two grounds in Cambridge, the University Ground and Parker's Piece. In 1846, Francis Fenner leased a former cherry orchar ...

. Titchmarsh played just once for the county in 1900, while the following year he made four appearances. He met with success in 1906,

averaging 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, ...

44, and up until the 1914 season he had only one poor season, in 1909 when he scored only 141 runs in seventeen innings. In all matches in 1913 (most of them club matches, and none of them first-class) he scored 4016 runs at an average of 62.75, with 21

centuries 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 ...

First-class cricket

Titchmarsh played for Hertfordshire following 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 in 1920 he made his debut in

for the

Marylebone Cricket Club Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London. The club was formerly the governing body of cricket retaining considerable global influence ...

(MCC) against the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

Lord's Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and ...

. He played matches for MCC in 1921 and 1922, as well as being selected to play for the Gentlemen in 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 ...

fixtures at

The Oval The Oval, currently known for sponsorship reasons as the Kia Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, located in the borough of Lambeth, in south London. The Oval has been the home ground of Surrey County Cricket Club since ...

in the same seasons. He toured Australia and New Zealand in late 1922 and early 1923 under the leadership of

Archie MacLaren Archibald Campbell MacLaren (1 December 1871 – 17 November 1944) was an English cricketer who captained the English cricket team, England cricket team at various times between 1898 and 1909. A right-handed Batting (cricket), batsman, he ...

, playing fifteen first-class matches against Australian state and New Zealand provincial sides, during which he scored 887 runs. He played for the

East of England cricket team An East of England cricket team (known simply as "East") was organised on an ''ad hoc'' basis at intervals between 1874 and 1948. ''CricketArchive'' lists ten East matches in total, five of them rated first-class. Four first-class matches were ag ...

against the touring

New Zealanders New Zealanders ( mi, Tāngata Aotearoa), colloquially known as Kiwis (), are people associated with New Zealand, sharing a common history, culture, and language (New Zealand English). People of various ethnicities and national origins are citiz ...

in 1927, while in the following season he played his final first-class match for MCC against

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

. Titchmarsh made his final appearance for Hertfordshire in 1929, averaging 51 in what would be his final season with the county. He made a total of 182 appearances for Hertfordshire in the Minor Counties Championship from 1900–1929. Titchmarsh was described by ''

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 ...

'' as possessing "a neat style of batting and strong defence, having, moreover, most of the scoring strokes at his command." He played most of his first-class cricket for MCC, making 36 of his 42 appearances for them. He scored 2,260 runs for MCC, averaging 41.85, making 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 ...

score four times, with a highest score of 171. His overall first-class career saw him score 2,589 runs at an average of 39.22.

Personal life

He died from a

stroke A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...

at Royston on 23 May 1930.

References

External links

Charles Titchmarsh
at

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Charles Titchmarsh
at CricketArchive {{DEFAULTSORT:Titchmarsh, Charles 1881 births 1930 deaths People from Royston, Hertfordshire People educated at Bishop's Stortford College English cricketers Hertfordshire cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers Gentlemen cricketers Minor Counties cricketers East of England cricketers English cricketers of 1919 to 1945 Cricketers from Hertfordshire