John George Langridge

MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language Molal ...

(10 February 1910 – 27 June 1999) was a

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 for

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

. His obituary in ''

Wisden ''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 ...

'' called him "one of the best English cricketers of the 20th century never to play a Test match". Born into a cricketing family at

Newick Newick is a village, civil parish and electoral ward in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. It is located on the A272 road east of Haywards Heath. The parish church, St. Mary's, dates mainly from the Victorian era, but still has a N ...

, north of

Lewes Lewes () is the county town of East Sussex, England. It is the police and judicial centre for all of Sussex and is home to Sussex Police, East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service, Lewes Crown Court and HMP Lewes. The civil parish is the centre of ...

, John Langridge followed his elder brother

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into the Sussex side in 1928 and stayed there until he retired in 1955. In between, he scored more than 34,000 runs as an opening batsman and made 76 centuries, and was a

Wisden Cricketer of the Year The ''Wisden'' Cricketers of the Year are cricketers selected for the honour by the annual publication ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', based primarily on their "influence on the previous English season". The award began in 1889 with the naming ...

in 1950. Considered unlucky not to have earned a place in the national team, only Alan Jones of

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has scored more runs but not played for his country, and no one who scored as many centuries as Langridge failed to win international recognition. In addition, Langridge took 784 catches, mostly at slip, including 69 in his last season at the age of 45; only five players have taken more catches in a career or in a season.Player Profile
from

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Langridge became a first-class

umpire An umpire is an official in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The term derives from the Old French nonper, ''non'', "not" and ''per'', ...

on retirement and stood in seven Test matches and eight

One Day International A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World C ...

s. He was appointed an

for services to cricket.

References

External links

* 1910 births 1999 deaths English cricketers North v South cricketers Players cricketers Sussex cricketers Wisden Cricketers of the Year English Test cricket umpires English One Day International cricket umpires Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Newick English cricketers of 1919 to 1945 {{England-cricket-bio-1910s-stub

See also

References

External links