Charles John Barnett (3 July 1910 – 28 May 1993) 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 for Gloucestershire and for England in 20

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from 1933 to 1948. He was one 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 ...

''s five

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 ...

in 1937.

Life and career

Charlie Barnett came from a well-known Gloucestershire cricketing family – his father ( Charles Barnett) and two uncles all played for the county, as amateurs. Educated at

Wycliffe College Wycliffe College () is an evangelical graduate school of theology at the University of Toronto. Founded in 1877 as an evangelical seminary in the Anglican tradition, Wycliffe College today attracts students from many Christian denominations from ...

in Stonehouse, Barnett began as an amateur (against Cambridge in 1927, when he was 16), turning professional in 1929. One of the most stylish batsman of the 1930s, Barnett began his career in the

middle order In cricket, the batting order is the sequence in which batters play through their team's innings, there always being two batters taking part at any one time. All eleven players in a team are required to bat if the innings is completed (i.e., i ...

for

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 ...

, but made his name as an opener after the retirement of Alfred Dipper in 1932. The greater responsibility added a tighter defence to his flashing array of drives and cuts, and he was picked for England against the

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in 1933. He marked his debut with a half century, batting at number 8, and passed 2,000 runs for the season. Although he remained vulnerable to an early dismissal, once set he was a formidable player and he recorded 48 centuries in all. Eleven sixes in an innings of 194 against

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in 1934, stands as a testament to the power of his stroke play. He failed to pass 1,500 runs in only two seasons, and gradually developed his left arm medium pace bowling, as a useful adjunct to his batting. Barnett scored two Test centuries, putting on 219 for the first wicket with

Len Hutton Sir Leonard Hutton (23 June 1916 – 6 September 1990) was an English cricketer. He played as an opening batsman for Yorkshire County Cricket Club from 1934 to 1955 and for England in 79 Test matches between 1937 and 1955. ''Wisden Cricketer ...

against

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in 1938, as England compiled 658 for eight. His undefeated 98 before lunch on the first day of that Ashes series, remains the closest any Englishman has ever come to recording a century before lunch, on the first day of a Test match against Australia. However his career, like so many others, was stymied by

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. He returned after the war in four more tests with little success, and retired from the county game to take up a league engagement for

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, and later ran his own meat and poultry business. He became a school coach until his retirement, and died in a Stroud Glos nursing home in May 1993, at the age of 82.

References

England Test cricketers English cricketers Gloucestershire cricketers Commonwealth XI cricketers 1910 births 1993 deaths Wisden Cricketers of the Year Sportspeople from Cheltenham Players cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers North v South cricketers English cricketers of 1919 to 1945 H. D. G. Leveson Gower's XI cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club Australian Touring Team cricketers {{England-Test-cricket-bio-stub