Christopher Maitland Howard Hathorn (7 April 1878 – 17 May 1920) was a South African

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 12

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from 1902 to 1911.

Cricket career

A solid right-handed batsman who usually batted in the middle order,

Christopher Martin-Jenkins Christopher Dennis Alexander Martin-Jenkins, MBE (20 January 1945 – 1 January 2013), also known as CMJ, was a British cricket journalist and a President of MCC. He was also the longest serving commentator for ''Test Match Special'' (TMS) on B ...

, ''The Complete Who's Who of Test Cricketers'', Rigby, Adelaide, 1983, p. 290. Maitland Hathorn 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 ...

for

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from 1897–98 to 1906–07, but most of his first-class matches came on his three tours of England with South Africa in

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and

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. In the match against

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in 1901, the South Africans batted first and were 114 for 3 when Hathorn went to the wicket. At the end of the first day he was 203

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, and the South Africans had scored 519 for 7. Playing "the most attractive cricket imaginable", he went on to make 239 in five hours. Largely thanks to this innings he topped the South African first-class aggregates and averages on the tour (on which no Tests were played), with 827 runs at an average of 35.95. Hathorn played his first Test in the 1902–03 series against Australia, the first Tests between the two teams. In the drawn First Test he made 45 and 31, but was less effective in the Second and Third, which South Africa lost, although he top-scored in the first innings of the Third Test with 19 of South Africa's total of 85. He was again successful when South Africa toured England in 1904. He scored 1167 runs at an average of 37.64, just behind

Louis Tancred Louis Joseph Tancred (7 October 1876 – 28 July 1934) was a South African cricketer who played in 14 Test matches from 1902 to 1913, including three as captain. Born into a cricketing family in Port Elizabeth, Cape Colony, Tancred attended St ...

in the aggregates. He made three

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, and in the important match against an England XI at

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he contributed 59 and 69 to the South Africans' victory. It was the last time South Africa toured England without playing Tests. In the Test series against England in 1905–06, which South Africa won four to one, Hathorn played in all five matches but achieved little except in the Third Test, when he scored the first century of the series on either side, 102 off 170 balls, and South Africa won by 243 runs. It was South Africa's fourth Test century; the first three had been scored by

Jimmy Sinclair James Hugh Sinclair (16 October 1876 – 23 February 1913) was a South African cricketer who played in 25 Test cricket, Test matches from 1896 to 1911. He scored South Africa cricket team, South Africa's first three Test Century (cricket), centu ...

. He was not successful in 1907, South Africa's first Test tour of England, although he played in all three Tests, scoring only 46 runs. Notwithstanding his sporting success, Hathorn did not enjoy robust health. Despite having been seriously ill, he was selected for the tour of Australia in 1910–11, but his illness restricted him to three matches in five months. He retired from cricket straight after the tour.

Personal life

Hathorn married Ruth Loesius in about 1912. She died of

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in 1915. He died in 1920 aged just 42.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hathorn, Maitland 1878 births 1920 deaths South Africa Test cricketers South African cricketers Gauteng cricketers London County cricketers Cricketers from Pietermaritzburg Cricketers from the Colony of Natal