Ian Raymond Lomax (30 July 1931 – 31 July 1996) played

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 ...

for more than 20 years for

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

in the

Minor Counties The National Counties, known as the Minor Counties before 2020, are the cricketing counties of England and Wales that do not have first-class status. The game is administered by the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), which comes unde ...

and latterly in

List A cricket List A cricket is a classification of the limited-overs (one-day) form of the sport of cricket, with games lasting up to eight hours. List A cricket includes One Day International (ODI) matches and various domestic competitions in which the numbe ...

, and also played in first-class matches for a variety of amateur sides, including the

Free Foresters Free Foresters Cricket Club is an English amateur cricket club, established in 1856 for players from the Midland counties of England. It is a 'wandering' (or nomadic) club, having no home ground. The Free Foresters were founded by the Rev. Willi ...

and

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 ...

(MCC). In 1962, he played in half a dozen first-class games for

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

, but the life of a day-to-day county cricketer was not for him. He was born in

Fulham Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea. The area faces Wandsworth ...

, London and died at

Deane, Hampshire Deane is a village and civil parish in the county of Hampshire, England. Its name appears in the name of the borough in which it is placed, Basingstoke and Deane. Governance The village is a civil parish and part of the Oakley and North Waltham ...

Cricket career

Educated at

Ludgrove Ludgrove, or Ludgrave, or Ludgraves, was an estate and farm in Middlesex between Monken Hadley in the west and Cockfosters in the east in what is now north London. It was centered on Ludgrove Farm (the Blue House) near to Cockfosters. History The ...

and

Eton Eton most commonly refers to Eton College, a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. Eton may also refer to: Places *Eton, Berkshire, a town in Berkshire, England * Eton, Georgia, a town in the United States * Éton, a commune in the Meuse dep ...

, Lomax had, according to his obituary 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 ...

, "an Edwardian sense of style and 18th century zest". A middle-order right-handed batsman and an enthusiastic though irregular fast-medium bowler, Lomax was termed "a grand stroke-player" as a schoolboy cricketer in 1949 and did not change his hard-hitting methods much over the years. He started playing for Wiltshire in the Minor Counties in 1950 and made his first-class cricket debut in 1952 for the

in a match against

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 ...

. Other individual matches for teams largely composed of amateurs followed in other seasons, and in the summer of 1961 he was a member of a tour organised and captained by former

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. ...

captain

Stuart Surridge Stuart Surridge (3 September 1917 – 13 April 1992) was an English first-class cricketer who played for Surrey. Though not known to be a remarkable batsman or bowler, Surridge became one of the most successful team captains in the history of Cou ...

Bermuda ) , anthem = "God Save the King" , song_type = National song , song = " Hail to Bermuda" , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , mapsize2 = , map_caption2 = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = , e ...

. Lomax's only full-time first-class cricket was a series of six games he played for Somerset at the start of the 1962 season which, according to one account, fulfilled "a long-cherished wish to sample county cricket". Batting in the lower middle order, he had one spectacular innings, making 83 in just 64 minutes, with three sixes and 10 fours, to bring Somerset within sight of an unlikely victory in the match against

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...

Taunton Taunton () is the county town of Somerset, England, with a 2011 population of 69,570. Its thousand-year history includes a 10th-century monastic foundation, Taunton Castle, which later became a priory. The Normans built a castle owned by the ...

. But he left Somerset before the end of May 1962 and did not reappear in first-class county cricket. Lomax went back to Minor Counties cricket with Wiltshire across the 1960s, regularly captaining the side. In both 1965 and 1969, Wiltshire qualified, as one of the better-performing Minor Counties, for the knock-out phase of the Gillette Cup and though both matches were lost quite comfortably against first-class opposition, Lomax did well in both games. Against

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...

in 1965, he made 50 out of a Wiltshire total of 157. And his 63 out of 147 against

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

in 1969 included 16 off an over from

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

Test Test(s), testing, or TEST may refer to: * Test (assessment), an educational assessment intended to measure the respondents' knowledge or other abilities Arts and entertainment * ''Test'' (2013 film), an American film * ''Test'' (2014 film), ...

bowler

Robin Hobbs Robin Nicholas Stuart Hobbs (born 8 May 1942) is a former English cricketer, who played in seven Tests for England from 1967 to 1971. He played first-class cricket for both Essex and Glamorgan. Cricket writer, Colin Bateman, remarked, "Hobb ...

and won Lomax the

man of the match In team sport, a player of the match or man of the match or woman of the match award is often given to the most outstanding player in a particular match. This can be a player from either team, although the player is generally chosen from the winn ...

award. He played for Wiltshire until 1970.

Outside cricket

Lomax was a farmer at Baydon in Wiltshire and also had extensive interests in horse-racing and hunting. He was master of the Craven Farmers' Hunt and for some years held a racehorse trainer's licence, although the actual trainer was his first wife, Rosemary, who was at the time barred from holding a trainer's licence by the-then rules of the

Jockey Club The Jockey Club is the largest commercial horse racing organisation in the United Kingdom. It owns 15 of Britain's famous racecourses, including Aintree, Cheltenham, Epsom Downs and both the Rowley Mile and July Course in Newmarket, amo ...

. The Lomaxes married in 1953 and were divorced in the early 1970s; a daughter, Sarah, was the wife of the racing driver

James Hunt James Simon Wallis Hunt (29 August 1947 – 15 June 1993) ''Autocourse Grand Prix Archive'', 14 October 2007. Retrieved 4 November 2007. was a British racing driver who won the Formula One World Championship in . After retiring from racing in ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lomax, Ian 1931 births 1996 deaths English cricketers Somerset cricketers Wiltshire cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers Buckinghamshire cricketers Free Foresters cricketers Minor Counties cricketers Wiltshire cricket captains Sportspeople from Fulham People educated at Eton College Cricketers from Wiltshire People from Deane, Hampshire People educated at Ludgrove School