Edward Henty (11 August 1839 – 20 January 1900) was an English

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 ...

er who played for

Kent County Cricket Club Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Kent. A club representing the county was first founded in 1842 but Ke ...

as a

professional A professional is a member of a profession or any person who works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skil ...

between 1865 and 1881. He was born in Hawkhurst in

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

and died at

Lewisham Lewisham () is an area of southeast London, England, south of Charing Cross. It is the principal area of the London Borough of Lewisham, and was within the Historic counties of England, historic county of Kent until 1889. It is identified i ...

in 1900 aged 60.Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914'' (revised edition), pp. 244–245.
Available online
at the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. Retrieved 7 August 2022.) Henty was a right-handed batsman and a wicket-keeper. He was a professional at the

Prince's Cricket Ground Prince's Cricket Ground in Chelsea, London was a cricket ground, created by the brothers George and James Prince as part of the Prince's Club, on which 37 first-class matches were played between 1872 and 1878. The ground was built on in 1883. The ...

in the 1870s and also ran billiard halls in what is now south-east London. His obituary in ''

Wisden 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 ...

'' in 1901 quoted

Arthur Haygarth Arthur Haygarth (4 August 1825 – 1 May 1903) was a noted amateur cricketer who became one of cricket's most significant historians. He played first-class cricket for the Marylebone Cricket Club and Sussex between 1844 and 1861, as well as num ...

's view that he was "above the average" as a batsman, though inclined to be too "steady". Wisden's obituary unhelpfully refers to him as "Edward Henry". But he mostly batted in the lower order and his career average was less than eight runs per innings. Almost all of his first-class cricket was for Kent: 116 out of 119 first-class games. He did not appear in the important representative matches such as

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 ...

, though he did play single games for the "Players of the South", the "United South of England Eleven" and for the Single in the 1871 Married v Single game, which was counted as first-class. At the end of his playing career in 1881, Henty was granted a benefit match by Kent, in which a 13-strong team from Kent played an 11-strong "England" eleven in the first game of the

Canterbury Cricket Week Canterbury Cricket Week is the oldest cricket festival week in England and involves a series of consecutive Kent home matches, traditionally held in the first week in August. It was founded in 1842, although a similar festival week was first hel ...

, with newspaper reports indicating an attendance of more than 4,000 people. The report in the ''

Evening Standard The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format. In October 2009, after be ...

'' stated that Henty was "known as a well-conducted and thoroughly deserving professional". Henty became a cricket umpire, standing in a few important games such as Gentlemen v Players in the 1870s, and then more regularly in county matches across the 1880s and up to 1894.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Henty, Edward 1839 births 1900 deaths English cricketers Kent cricketers People from Hawkhurst Players of the South cricketers United South of England Eleven cricketers