George William Webb (23 October 1857 – 26 December 1931) was an English professional

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, umpire and cricket coach. Webb played in two

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 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 ...

.George Webb
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2020-12-19.

Early life

Webb was born at Derringstone, part of Barham 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 1857. His father, James, was a publican who ran ''The White Horse'' in nearby

Bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

. His mother, Harriet, came from Newmarket in

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

.Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914'' (revised edition), pp.555–556.
Available online
at the

Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) was founded in England in 1973 for the purpose of researching and collating information about the history and statistics of cricket. Originally called the Association of Cricket Stati ...

. Retrieved 2020-07-01.)

Cricket career

After playing for Kent Colts in 1879, Webb made his first-class debut for the county side in 1880 against

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

. He was employed as a professional cricketer and coach throughout the 1880s, working at locations such as

Westminster School (God Gives the Increase) , established = Earliest records date from the 14th century, refounded in 1560 , type = Public school Independent day and boarding school , religion = Church of England , head_label = Hea ...

Croome Court Croome Court is a mid-18th-century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Upton-upon-Severn in south Worcestershire, England. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for ...

and

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

and by the early 1890s was working at

Tonbridge School (God Giveth the Increase) , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent day and boarding , religion = , president = , head_label ...

and playing for Tonbridge Cricket Club. After a good performance for a side of professionals against the

Gentlemen of Kent 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 ...

in 1892 he made his second and final first-class appearance for the county side, taking a single wicket 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_ ...

Taunton Taunton () is the county town of Somerset, England, with a 2011 population of 69,570. Its thousand-year history includes a 10th-century monastic foundation, Taunton Castle, which later became a priory. The Normans built a castle owned by the ...

. After the establishment of the

Tonbridge Nursery The Angel Ground was a sports ground at Tonbridge in the English county of Kent. It was used as a venue for first-class cricket by Kent County Cricket Club between 1869 and 1939 and then for association football by Tonbridge Angels F.C., until ...

in 1897, Webb was employed as a coach at the Nursery until 1900. Webb stood as an

umpire An umpire is an official in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The term derives from the Old French nonper, ''non'', "not" and ''per'', ...

between 1883 and 1913, umpiring

matches until 1905 when he umpired

county cricket Inter-county cricket matches are known to have been played since the early 18th century, involving teams that are representative of the historic counties of England and Wales. Since the late 19th century, there have been two county championship ...

matches. He umpired 133 first-class matches in total, and stood in three Test matches during the

1912 Triangular Tournament The 1912 Triangular Tournament was a Test cricket competition played between Australia, England and South Africa, the only Test-playing nations at the time. The ultimate winners of the tournament were England, with four wins in their six matches ...

. He also operated a sport outfitters shop in

Tonbridge Tonbridge ( ) is a market town in Kent, England, on the River Medway, north of Royal Tunbridge Wells, south west of Maidstone and south east of London. In the administrative borough of Tonbridge and Malling, it had an estimated population ...

from the 1890s.

Family

Webb's brother,

Arthur Webb Arthur Stuart Webb (6 August 1868 – 3 December 1952) was an English first-class cricketer. Webb was a right-handed batsman who bowled right-arm medium pace. Webb made his first-class debut for Hampshire County Cricket Club in the 1895 ...

, almost eleven years his junior, played for

Hampshire County Cricket Club Hampshire 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 Hampshire. Hampshire teams formed by earlier organisations, principal ...

between 1895 and 1904, scoring over 5,000 runs in 49 first-class matches for the side. He later played as an amateur for

Glamorgan , HQ = Cardiff , Government = Glamorgan County Council (1889–1974) , Origin= , Code = GLA , CodeName = Chapman code , Replace = * West Glamorgan * Mid Glamorgan * South Glamorgan , Motto ...

in the

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 ...

. Another brother Fred Webb was a well known jockey, winning the

Epsom Derby The Derby Stakes, also known as the Epsom Derby or the Derby, and as the Cazoo Derby for sponsorship reasons, is a Group 1 flat horse race in England open to three-year-old colts and fillies. It is run at Epsom Downs Racecourse in Surrey o ...

Doncaster Doncaster (, ) is a city in South Yorkshire, England. Named after the River Don, it is the administrative centre of the larger City of Doncaster. It is the second largest settlement in South Yorkshire after Sheffield. Doncaster is situated in ...

in 1873 after the original jockey engaged was found to be drunk before the race. He won many other significant races and later had a distinguished career as a trainer.Webb, Frederic E (1853–1917)

National Horseracing Museum Palace House is the home of the National Horse Racing Museum in the remaining part of Charles II's racing palace in Newmarket, Suffolk, England. It is home to the National Horse Racing Museum, the British Sporting Art Trust and Retraining of Rac ...

. Retrieved 2020-12-19. Webb married Margaret Redfern in 1894; the couple had two daughters. He died in 1931 at Stoke-by-Nayland in Suffolk aged 74.

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Webb, George 1857 births 1931 deaths English cricketers Kent cricketers People from the City of Canterbury