John Fox (7 September 1904 – 15 November 1961) was an English
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 140
first-class matches
between the wars
In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War. The interwar period was relativel ...
, 46 for
Warwickshire and 94 for
Worcestershire.
Fox made his first-class debut for Warwickshire against Worcestershire at
Amblecote
Amblecote is an urban village and one of the most affluent areas in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in the West Midlands, England. It lies immediately north of the historic town of Stourbridge, extending about one and a half miles from it, an ...
in June 1922. In a 223-run Warwickshire win, he made 21 in his only innings and bowled two overs without reward. He then appeared in the extraordinary game against
Hampshire at
Edgbaston in which Hampshire, having been bowled out for 15, made 521
following on
In the game of cricket, a team who batted second and scored significantly fewer runs than the team who batted first may be forced to follow-on: to take their second innings immediately after their first. The follow-on can be enforced by the team ...
and won by 155 runs.
Fox's personal contribution to the match was minimal, although he did take his maiden first-class wicket, that of
William Shirley.
Fox played a few more times that season without notable success, and continued to appear sporadically for the next few summers. Although he took a career-best 4–27 against Worcestershire in 1926, it was only the following year that he started to play more regularly, appearing 18 times. He had a terrible season, however, claiming just four wickets at a woeful
bowling average
In cricket, a player's bowling average is the number of runs they have conceded per wicket taken. The lower the bowling average is, the better the bowler is performing. It is one of a number of statistics used to compare bowlers, commonly use ...
of 81.50, while his
batting average was pushed above 20 only because of nine
not outs in 17 innings. He did play two more games for Warwickshire in 1928, but after that he took the short journey to
New Road to play for Worcestershire.
1929, Fox's first season with his new county, was something of a mixed bag: his tally of 505 runs was higher than the aggregate of his career up to that point, and although he averaged only 15.78, he did hit 60 and 19
opening the batting against
Glamorgan
, HQ = Cardiff
, Government = Glamorgan County Council (1889–1974)
, Origin=
, Code = GLA
, CodeName = Chapman code
, Replace =
* West Glamorgan
* Mid Glamorgan
* South Glamorgan
, Motto ...
in late July. His bowling, however, was again unproductive: four wickets at 71. This, however, was followed by unquestionably the best season of Fox's career: in 1930 he scored 861 runs at 22.65 and took 16 wickets at 28.37.
After this, Fox's career gradually declined. Although he was still capable of useful scores, such as the career-best 73 he made against
Northamptonshire in May 1931, these were never very frequent and for the last three years of his career he struggled to push his batting average beyond the low teens. Nor could his bowling rescue him: he never again took more than five wickets in a season, and at an average of around 50 runs apiece he was simply too expensive.
Fox played his last first-class match at the end of 1933, against
Yorkshire. In a drawn game he made 19 in his only innings and took the single wicket of
Arthur Wood.
He was born in
Selly Park,
Birmingham; he also died in Birmingham, aged 57.
Notes
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fox, John
1904 births
1961 deaths
English cricketers
Warwickshire cricketers
Worcestershire cricketers
Cricketers from Birmingham, West Midlands