Hector Cosmo Fisher (born 4 May 1901) was an English-Swiss-Thai

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

player and

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...

Personal life

Fisher was born in

Myaungmya Myaungmya ( my, မြောင်းမြမြို့ ) is a town in Myaungmya Township, Ayeyarwady Region, Myanmar. The town is home to the Myanmar Union Adventist Seminary, a Seventh-day Adventist seminary and Myaungmya Education College. ...

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

in 1901 and baptised in Bassein,

Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...

, British India in August 1902. He was the son of Henry Cosmo-Fisher (1874–1918) and Annie Fisher. His father was an Anglo-Indian born in Bangalore. He had a younger brother, Colin Cosmo-Fisher (1903–1964). He was described as a cosmopolitan "Burmese-Siamese-English-Swiss" athlete. Fisher attended

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 th ...

, and played tennis there before he moved to Switzerland.

Tennis

Fisher was above all an excellent tennis player. He represented Switzerland during his tennis career and played in the Davis Cup in the years between 1931 and 1939. Fisher won the

Swiss Open The Omega European Masters is the Swiss stop on professional men's golf's European Tour, and in 2009 it became the first event in Europe to be co-sanctioned by the Asian Tour. Founded as the Swiss Open in 1923, the tournament was prefixed with Eu ...

Gstaad Gstaad ( ; ) is a town in the German-speaking section of the Canton of Bern in southwestern Switzerland. It is part of the municipality of Saanen and is known as a major ski resort and a popular destination amongst high society and the internati ...

four times in 1923, 1928, 1929 and 1931. In 1925 he reached the quarter-finals of Wimbledon. He won the international tennis tournament in

Wiesbaden Wiesbaden () is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. , it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area ...

in 1929 and an international tournament in

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...

in 1930.

Football

Fisher was also a footballer and played for Montreux-Sports at least during the 1927–28 season. He also played for

FC Basel 1893 Fussball Club Basel 1893, widely known as FC Basel, FCB, or just Basel, is a Swiss football club based in Basel, in the Canton of Basel-Stadt. Formed in 1893, the club has been Swiss national champions 20 times, Swiss Cup winners 13 times, and ...

in at least one league match in 1930. Fisher joined Basel's first team during their 1930–31 season under Austrian head coach Gustav Putzendopler. He played his first test game for them on 25 October 1930 at home in the

Landhof The Landhof was a sports stadium in the district Basel-Wettstein in Kleinbasel, Basel. It was the former and first home stadium of FC Basel. It is mentioned for the first time in a chronicle in the second half of the 18th century as a ''nice su ...

as Basel won 5–1 against

La Chaux-de-Fonds La Chaux-de-Fonds () is a Swiss city in the canton of Neuchâtel. It is located in the Jura mountains at an altitude of 1000 m, a few kilometers south of the French border. After Geneva, Lausanne and Fribourg, it is the fourth largest city l ...

. After playing in another test game against Biel-Bienne, Fisher played his domestic league debut for the club in the away game on 30 November 1930 as Basel played a 2–2 draw with local team

Old Boys The terms Old Boys and Old Girls are the usual expressions in use in the United Kingdom for former pupils of primary and secondary schools.''Oxford English Dictionary'' While these are traditionally associated with independent schools, they are ...

. Fisher was only the second English person to play league football for the club, in fact to date he remains one of only three English players ever to play for Basel, the others being Archibald E. Gough between 1900 and 1902 and L. B. Trenchard Chaffey in 1901.

References

Sources

* Rotblau: Jahrbuch Saison 2017/2018. Publisher: FC Basel Marketing AG. * Die ersten 125 Jahre. Publisher: Josef Zindel im Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag, Basel.

External links

* * *
Hector Cosmo Fisher on "Basler Fussballarchiv" Website

Note

''(NB: The editors of these books and the authors in "Basler Fussballarchiv" have not been able to be able to identify all the players, their date and place of birth or date and place of death, who played in the games during the early years of FC Basel.)'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Fisher, Hector Swiss male tennis players 1901 births Year of death missing Alumni of the University of Oxford FC Basel players Men's association football players not categorized by position Swiss men's footballers