John Gunn (cricketer)
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John Richmond Gunn (19 July 1876 – 21 August 1963) 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 in six
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from 1901 to 1905. A nephew of the then-famous batsman William Gunn, John Gunn first played for Nottinghamshire when only twenty. The following year John Gunn scored 107 against the Philadelphians in his third first-class match and took ten wickets against
Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...
in his fourth. With
William Attewell William Attewell (; commonly known as Dick Attewell) (12 June 1861 – 11 June 1927) was a cricketer who played for Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club and England. Attewell was a medium pace bowler who was renowned for his extraordinary accur ...
desperately needing support to improve Nottinghamshire's deplorably weak bowling, Gunn was seen as a boon but he but did so little after the Yorkshire game that he could not establish a place in the team. 1898, strangely, was a repeat of the previous year with one bowling performance against Yorkshire overshadowing everything else. 1899, with the decline of Attewell, saw John Gunn establish himself as Nottinghamshire's chief bowler, though he faded late in the season. 1900, however, saw him and
Thomas Wass Thomas George Wass (26 December 1873 – 27 October 1953), known as Tom Wass, was a Nottinghamshire bowler who is best remembered, along with Albert Hallam, for bowling that gave Nottinghamshire a brilliant County Championship win in 1907. Wa ...
restore Nottinghamshire's bowling to reasonable strength for the first time since the early 1890s. He took eleven wickets for the Players against the Gentlemen at the Oval. He also advanced as a batsman with six scores of over fifty, and the following season, though he never played a bigger innings than 87, scored 1,000 runs for the first time and bowled, considering the unfavourable pitches, exceedingly well. In those days Gunn was a left hand medium pace bowler who relied on the ball that went in from off to leg, which allowed him to nag away at batsmen very well on good pitches but could not break-back on a sticky wicket like
Rhodes Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the So ...
,
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, Briggs or Hargreave. It was because of this that Gunn was chosen for the Ashes tour of 1901/1902 when Yorkshire refused to let Rhodes go – apparently because they feared it would affect his performance the following season. The effects of the tour hit hard on Gunn in 1902 and he was very disappointing with both bat and ball apart from a few good bowling performances. The following year, though, bowling in a slower style, he had his finest season ever and was momentarily second as an all-rounder to Hirst. In the process, on a featherbed wicket at Trent Bridge, he hit 294 against
Leicestershire Leicestershire ( ; postal abbreviation Leics.) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East Midlands, England. The county borders Nottinghamshire to the north, Lincolnshire to the north-east, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire t ...
, which was amazingly his first century since his third first-class match! As a bowler, Gunn took 28 wickets in two games against
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. ...
and
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 ...
during the
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week. He was named a '' Cricketer of the Year'' by ''
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 ...
'' for 1904, but the following three years were not quite up to the standard set in 1903 – though he bowled wonderfully against Essex in 1905 on a perfect pitch. In 1906 Gunn again changed his style, bowling very slowly and tossing the ball up, with barely improved success. 1907 was a year of quite incredible triumph for Nottinghamshire, but for John Gunn it was an anticlimax. Wass and Hallam accomplished the most amazing run of bowling triumphs in the history of the competition, and Gunn bowled only 281 overs in 17 matches. Only against Essex and the South African touring team did Gunn have to do serious bowling. In batting, too, he was overshadowed by his younger brother
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and failed to reach 1,000 runs despite a century against Sussex. Unexpectedly, the lack of practice in 1907 affected his bowling severely when Wass and Hallam failed to repeat their 1907 form in the following two seasons. Indeed, by 1909 John Gunn was clearly no more than an occasional bowler – he had taken only 42 wickets for 30 each in 1908 and 1909 – besides failing to recover his batting form. In the extremely dry summer of 1911, he was back in form as a batsman, but though called upon to bowl a good deal he was never formidable and always expensive. Nonetheless, his batting remained a major force right up to the early 1920s: he averaged over 40 in 1911, 1913, 1914, 1919 and 1920 and was at times the side's outstanding batsman. After this, time gradually took its toll and Gunn dropped out of the Nottinghamshire side after a few matches in 1925. He did play for Sir
Julien Cahn Sir Julien Cahn, 1st Baronet (21 October 1882 – 26 September 1944) was a British businessman, philanthropist and cricket enthusiast. Early life and family Cahn was born in Cardiff in 1882 to parents of German Jewish descent. His father, Alber ...
's XI after this time, scoring 139 in one match against Essex in 1930, and featuring for the team until at least the age of fifty-six.


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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gunn, John (cricketer) 1876 births 1963 deaths English cricketers England Test cricketers Nottinghamshire cricketers Wisden Cricketers of the Year People from Hucknall Cricketers from Nottinghamshire North v South cricketers Players cricketers London County cricketers English cricketers of 1919 to 1945 C. I. Thornton's XI cricketers