Norman Walter Harding (19 March 1916 – 25 September 1947) was an English cricketer who 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

Kent County Cricket Club Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Kent. A club representing the county was first founded in 1842 but Ke ...

from 1937 until shortly before his death in 1947. He died in

Abingdon-on-Thames Abingdon-on-Thames ( ), commonly known as Abingdon, is a historic market town and civil parish in the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Oxfordshire, England, on the River Thames. Historic counties of England, Historically the ...

. Playfair Cricket Annual, 1948 p.90.Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914'' (revised edition), pp. 88–89.
Available online
at the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. Retrieved 2020-12-21.) Harding was born at Woolston, Hampshire near

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

in 1916 and educated at Reading School in

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berk ...

.Harding, Norman Walter
Obituaries in 1947, ''

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 ...

'', 1948. Retrieved 2017-10-23. He played for

Berkshire County Cricket Club Berkshire County Cricket Club is one of twenty National county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Berkshire. The team is currently a member of the National Counties Champions ...

between 1934 and 1936, including making 16 appearances in the

Minor Counties Championship The NCCA 3 Day Championship (previously the Minor Counties Cricket Championship) is a season-long competition in England and Wales that is contested by the members of the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), the so-called national cou ...

Norman Harding
, The Council of Cricket Societies (using data from CricketArchive). Retrieved 2017-10-23. and moved to play professionally at Kent in the 1937 season. In his first competitive match for Kent, a Second XI fixture against

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 ...

, he took 18 wickets, nine in each Wiltshire innings, a feat ''Wisden'' describes as "extraordinary" and "regarded as unique in county cricket". He made his first-class debut for the county in August 1937 against

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

Dover Dover () is a town and major ferry port in Kent, South East England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies south-east of Canterbury and east of Maidstone ...

, going on to make 83 first-class appearances for Kent, playing regularly after his first season.Norman Harding
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-10-23. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Harding played some club cricket in the Lancashire League for

Rishton Cricket Club Rishton Cricket Club is a cricket club in the Lancashire League, which plays its home games at Blackburn Road in Rishton, Lancashire, England. For the 2017 season their captain is Matt Lambert and professional is Shaun von Berg. The club was ...

in 1941 and appeared for an Anti-Aircraft Command side and an England XI in 1943. He made three appearances for Berkshire in matches during 1945 and played for an Under 33s side in one of the eleven first-class matches possible in England after the end of the war before rejoining Kent in 1946. Harding was considered to be a key member of Kent's bowling attack either side of the war. He took 69 wickets in 1939 and 68 in 1947 and was perhaps the fastest Kent bowler since

Bill Bradley William Warren Bradley (born July 28, 1943) is an American politician and former professional basketball player. He served three terms as a Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey (1979–1997). He ran for the Democratic Party's nomination f ...

who had bowled at the turn of the century. He died in the 1947 polio epidemic which swept the United Kingdom after less than a week in hospital at

. He was 31.

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External links

1916 births 1947 deaths English cricketers Kent cricketers Berkshire cricketers British Army personnel of World War II Deaths from polio Cricketers from Southampton English people with disabilities {{england-cricket-bio-1910s-stub