Gerald Gwydyr Heslop (17 April 1879 – 28 November 1913) 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 in two matches 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 ...

in 1898. He was born at

Thames Ditton Thames Ditton is a suburban village on the River Thames, in the Elmbridge borough of Surrey, England. Apart from a large inhabited island in the river, it lies on the southern bank, centred 12.2 miles (19.6 km) southwest of Charing Cross ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

and died at

Cringleford Cringleford is a civil parish and village in the England, English county of Norfolk. The village sits on the River Yare and forms part of the outskirts of Norwich. History Cringleford's name is of mixed Vikings, Viking and Anglo-Saxon origin and ...

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

. Heslop was educated at

Norwich School Norwich School (formally King Edward VI Grammar School, Norwich) is a selective English independent day school in the close of Norwich Cathedral, Norwich. Among the oldest schools in the United Kingdom, it has a traceable history to 1096 as a ...

and at

Clare College, Cambridge Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The college was founded in 1326 as University Hall, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. It was refounded ...

. A batsman often used as an opener and an occasional bowler, he was picked for Minor Counties matches for

from the age of 17 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 ...

's inaugural season of 1895, and played for the county through to 1901. At

however, he was unsuccessful in the two games for which he was chosen, and faced stiff competition for batting places from players such as

Gilbert Jessop Gilbert Laird Jessop (19 May 1874 – 11 May 1955) was an English cricket player, often reckoned to have been the fastest run-scorer cricket has ever known. He was Wisden Cricketer of the Year for 1898. Career Jessop was born in Cheltenham, Gl ...

and

Cuthbert Burnup Cuthbert James "Pinky" Burnup (21 November 1875 – 5 April 1960) was an English amateur sportsman who played cricket and football around the turn of the 20th century. Burnup played once for the England football team but is more renowned for pl ...

who would subsequently go on to substantial cricket careers; though he made centuries in college matches, he was not picked again for the university side. Outside university terms, however, he continued to play for Norfolk and in 1900 he was singled out 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 ...

'' as the team's only consistent batsman, with 407 runs at an

average 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, ...

of 31 runs per innings. Heslop graduated from Cambridge University with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

degree in 1901, and the directory of Cambridge alumni records that he was an assistant schoolmaster at Fonthill Preparatory School in

East Grinstead East Grinstead is a town in West Sussex, England, near the East Sussex, Surrey, and Kent borders, south of London, northeast of Brighton, and northeast of the county town of Chichester. Situated in the extreme northeast of the county, the civ ...

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 ...

in 1903. Norfolk dropped out of Minor Counties cricket for two seasons after 1901 and when it resumed in 1904, Heslop was not in the team; he appears, in any case, to have been ill for many years before his death at 34 in 1913.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Heslop, Gerald 1879 births 1913 deaths English cricketers Cambridge University cricketers Norfolk cricketers People educated at Norwich School Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge Cricketers from Thames Ditton Schoolteachers from Surrey