Geoffrey Frank Anson (8 October 1922 – 4 December 1977) 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 and civil servant.Geoffrey Anson

CricInfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

. Retrieved 2018-09-16. A right-handed batsman, he played ten

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 ...

matches during the

1947 English cricket season 1947 was the 48th season of County Championship cricket in England. It is chiefly remembered for the batting performances of Denis Compton and Bill Edrich who established seasonal records that, with the subsequent reduction in the number of fir ...

for

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

and

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 ...

.Geoffrey Anson
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2018-09-16. He also played cricket for a team of Europeans in Nigeria whilst serving in the British Colonial Service.

Early life and war service

Anson was born at Sevenoaks 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 ...

in 1922 and educated at

Harrow School (The Faithful Dispensation of the Gifts of God) , established = (Royal Charter) , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent schoolBoarding school , religion = Church of E ...

, where he played cricket and captained the side during his final season in 1941.Cartwright GHM Lt-Co
The Public Schools, 1941
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 ...

'', pp.239-247. Retrieved 2018-09-16.
Archived version
Archived 2018-09-16.) '' Wisden'' considered that he might have been the "best schoolboy batsman of the year" and described him as being a "daring stroke player".Cartwright, p.243. He initially went up to the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

in 1941 and played cricket for the university side during the summer of 1942,Miscellaneous matches played by Geoffrey Anson
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2018-09-16. before serving in the armed forces during World War II. He was commissioned in the Coldstream Guards as a

2nd Lieutenant Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank. Australia The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army until ...

in April 1943Supplement to the London Gazette, 11 May 1943
p.2109. Retrieved 2018-09-16. and served in the 4th Battalion, part of the

Guards Armoured Division The Guards Armoured Division was an armoured division of the British Army during the Second World War. The division was created in the United Kingdom on 17 June 1941 during the Second World War from elements of the Guards units, the Grenadier G ...

.Anson, Geoffrey Frank
British Army Officers, 1939-1945. Retrieved 2018-09-16. He was awarded the

Military Cross The Military Cross (MC) is the third-level (second-level pre-1993) military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and formerly awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries. The MC i ...

in May 1945 whilst serving as a

Lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations. The meaning of lieutenant differs in different militaries (see comparative military ranks), but it is often sub ...

.Supplement to the London Gazette, 24 May 1945
p.2648. Retrieved 2018-09-16. Anson was serving as a tank commander during Operation Veritable, an offensive along the

Siegfried Line The Siegfried Line, known in German as the ''Westwall'', was a German defensive line built during the 1930s (started 1936) opposite the French Maginot Line. It stretched more than ; from Kleve on the border with the Netherlands, along the west ...

on the Dutch-German border near

Nijmegen Nijmegen (;; Spanish and it, Nimega. Nijmeegs: ''Nimwèège'' ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and tenth largest of the Netherlands as a whole, located on the Waal river close to the German border. It is about 6 ...

in February. He had dismounted to organise mine clearance parties to allow the capture of Frasselt by the 9th Cameronians.Paget J (ed) (2000
The Reichswald and Rhineland: Operation VERITABLE, February-March 1945. 4th (Tank) and 5th Battalions
in ''The Coldstream Guards'', 1650–2000, p.138. Lee Cooper: Barnsley.

Cricket and later life

He went back to Cambridge in 1946 before leaving to join the Colonial Service the following summer.Morgan R (2016) 'West Africa goes multiracial' in ''Real International Cricket: A History in One Hundred Scorecards''.
Available online
Retrieved 2018-09-16.)
Obituaries before 1978, ''

'', 1979. Retrieved 2018-09-16. Anson made his

debut for the university 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 May 1947 and was set to win a

Blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when obs ...

before "the claims of the Colonial Service forced him to withdraw from the side and he was unable to play in the

University match The University Match in a cricketing context is generally understood to refer to the annual fixture between Oxford University Cricket Club and Cambridge University Cricket Club. From 2001, as part of the reorganisation of first-class cricket, ...

". Later in the year he played seven

County Championship The County Championship (referred to as the LV= Insurance County Championship for sponsorship reasons) is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales and is organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). It bec ...

matches for Kent, his last first-class match coming against

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

in August. Anson worked in the Colonial Service and played a number of matches for Nigeria Europeans against

Gold Coast Gold Coast may refer to: Places Africa * Gold Coast (region), in West Africa, which was made up of the following colonies, before being established as the independent nation of Ghana: ** Portuguese Gold Coast (Portuguese, 1482–1642) ** Dutch G ...

Europeans between 1949 and 1956. He later played for the Kent Second XI between 1957 and 1959 and worked as an area manager for the Ford Motor Credit Company based in London. He died at

Hastings Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...

in 1977 aged 55.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Anson, Geoffrey 1922 births 1977 deaths Military personnel from Kent People from Sevenoaks English cricketers Kent cricketers Cambridge University cricketers People educated at Harrow School British Army personnel of World War II Coldstream Guards officers Recipients of the Military Cross