Horace Leslie Hazell (30 September 1909 – 31 March 1990) was a

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 played for

Somerset County Cricket Club Somerset 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 Somerset. Founded in 1875, Somerset was initially regarded as a minor ...

in 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 ...

. A slow left-arm orthodox bowler and tail-end left-handed batsman, Hazell made his Somerset debut in 1929 and played fairly regularly from 1932 onwards. In pre-war cricket he was, though, inclined to be expensive and his figures suggest that he was under-bowled by the standards of the day. Only in 1936, when he took 87 wickets at an average of just over 21 runs apiece, did he suggest more than ordinary talent. Returning after the Second World War, however, Hazell developed into a highly accurate bowler who achieved success by pinning the batsmen down rather than through any great spin. For Somerset against

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in 1949, he bowled 105 balls without conceding a run, including 17 consecutive maiden overs. He took 105 wickets in 1948 and 106 in 1949, in both seasons averaging less than 20 runs per wicket, and was still an effective bowler into his early 40s. At the end of Somerset's disastrous 1952 season, however, when he had again come top of the county's bowling averages, he was not re-engaged. In his full career, Hazell took 957 wickets at 23.97. He was a reliable slip fielder and a popular, jovial, rotund figure.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hazell, Horace 1909 births 1990 deaths English cricketers Somerset cricketers Cricketers from Bristol