Harry Wakefield Ince (9 April 1893 - 11 May 1978) was a Barbadian

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 represented

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

in matches before they attained Test match status.

Education

Ince attended Harrison College in

Bridgetown Bridgetown (UN/LOCODE: BB BGI) is the capital and largest city of Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Island ...

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate). ...

, from which many prominent batsmen emerged in this period.

Career

Ince first played for

in 1913 against the touring

Marylebone Cricket Club Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London. The club was formerly the governing body of cricket retaining considerable global influence ...

; he scored 56 on his first-class debut and 57

not out In cricket, a batter is not out if they come out to bat in an innings and have not been dismissed by the end of an innings. The batter is also ''not out'' while their innings is still in progress. Occurrence At least one batter is not out at t ...

in his second game. Shortly afterwards, he was chosen to play for a representative West Indies team against the MCC and scored 167, his first century in first-class cricket. After the First World War, Ince continued to represent Barbados, scoring centuries in 1920 and 1922, and he was subsequently selected to tour England with the West Indies team in 1923. In first-class matches that season in England, Ince scored 381 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 16.56 with a highest score of 46. After the tour, there were rumours that Ince had argued with the captain of the team. His remaining first-class matches were played for Barbados, but he only passed fifty once more, and played his last match in 1930. Ince was a fast-scoring batsman who played a range of strokes, and was enormously popular with spectators because of his stylish batting.Sandiford, p. 30. Some experts considered him to be comparable in style to the famous English batsman Frank Woolley.

Historical assessment

In his book on schools' cricket in colonial Barbados, Keith Sandiford suggests that Ince was the best Barbadian left-handed batsman before the Second World War.Sandiford, p. 82. Although Ince was unsuccessful in England, his batting average over 18 years for Barbados was 47.12. Late into his career, Ince continued to be highly successful batting in Barbados club cricket.

References

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ince, Harry 1893 births 1978 deaths Pre-1928 West Indies cricketers Barbadian cricketers People from Christ Church, Barbados Barbados cricketers People educated at Harrison College (Barbados)