Horace Venn (4 July 1892 – 23 November 1953) was an English

cricketer 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 ...

who played

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 ...

between 1919 and 1925 for

Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon an ...

. He was born and died at

Coventry Coventry ( or ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its ...

, now in

West Midlands West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

but formerly in

. Venn was prominent as a right-handed batsman in Coventry district club cricket before the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, playing for the Foleshill Victoria club, and also appeared in second eleven matches for Warwickshire. He did not at this stage play first-class cricket, but in 1919, he turned out for a "full" Warwickshire side – composed mainly of

amateurs An amateur () is generally considered a person who pursues an avocation independent from their source of income. Amateurs and their pursuits are also described as popular, informal, self-taught, user-generated, DIY, and hobbyist. History Hist ...

– in a first-class non-

County Championship The County Championship (referred to as the LV= Insurance County Championship for sponsorship reasons) is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales and is organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). It bec ...

game against

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...

and, opening the batting, scored 151. In the return match a few weeks later, his 58 in his only innings was the top score of the game. That appears to have encouraged Venn to give a whole season to first-class cricket and he was a regular opening batsman for the first three months of the 1920 season. Initially, he was quite successful, and against

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 ...

Catford Catford is a district in south east London, England, and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Lewisham. It is southwest of Lewisham itself, mostly in the Rushey Green (ward), Rushey Green and Catford South Ward (electoral subdiv ...

he made 115 out of Warwickshire's total of 233, his second and final first-class century. ''

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 ...

'' noted: "Strong in defence with a stiff fore-arm forcing stroke, Venn got most of his runs in front of the wicket. He played-on after two and a half hours' batting, having scored 115 out of 222." Venn did not pass 50 in any other innings that season, and his record for the season as a whole was modest, with 591 runs at an average of 16.41 runs per innings. Venn returned to Warwickshire for a few early matches in the 1921 season, but was not successful; he then played three times in 1922 and once in 1925, again without making much impact.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Venn, Horace 1892 births 1953 deaths English cricketers Warwickshire cricketers