Robert Lyon Harvey (14 September 1911 – 20 July 2000) 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 two

Test matches Test match in some sports refers to a sporting contest between national representative teams and may refer to: * Test cricket * Test match (indoor cricket) * Test match (rugby union) * Test match (rugby league) * Test match (association football) ...

in 1935–36. Harvey was a right-handed middle-order batsman and a right-arm medium-pace bowler. He 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 Natal in two matches in 1933–34 without success. But when he was picked again two years later for Natal in the match against the 1935–36 Australians, he scored 16 and 104. Although eventually bowled by Clarrie Grimmett, he resisted for three and three-quarters hours, and "alternated periods of hard hitting with rigid defence". After Grimmett (and Bill O'Reilly) had led Australia to two Test victories in the first three matches of a five-game series, with no South African batsman apart from

Dudley Nourse Arthur Dudley Nourse (12 November 1910 – 14 August 1981) was a South African Test cricketer. Primarily a batsman, he was captain of the South African team from 1948 to 1951. Early life Nourse was born in Durban, the son of South African T ...

making more than 66 runs in any one innings, Harvey was picked for the fourth Test. He had limited success, scoring 5 and 17 as the South Africans suffered their worst defeat of the series, though he did hit one six off Grimmett. The only first-class match between the fourth and fifth Tests was the second game between Natal and the Australians, and this time Harvey scored 138, slightly more than half the Natal first-innings total of 272; he shared a second-wicket stand of 135 with

Herby Wade Herbert Frederick Wade (14 September 1905 – 23 November 1980) was a South African cricketer who played in 10 Test matches in 1935 and 1935–36. A middle-order batsman, Wade captained South Africa in every Test that he played in, including t ...

who was captain of both the Natal and the South African teams. Harvey was retained for the fifth Test and made scores of 28 and 1 in another heavy defeat being, in the second innings, the first out of five dismissals (of the last six batsmen in the team) to be caught by

Vic Richardson Victor York Richardson (7 September 189430 October 1969) was a leading Australian sportsman of the 1920s and 1930s, captaining the Australia cricket team and the South Australia Australian rules football team, representing Australia in basebal ...

off the bowling of Grimmett. On the whole tour of South Africa by the Australians, only four centuries were scored off them: two by Nourse (one in a Test) and two by Harvey. Those centuries, though, were the only ones in Harvey's first-class cricket career. He remained as a batsman and, increasingly, a bowler with Natal up to the 1939–40 season but although he passed 50 on 11 further occasions, he did not reach 100 again. At the end of the Second World War, as a temporary captain in the South African forces, he was awarded an

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 ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harvey, Robert 1911 births 2000 deaths South Africa Test cricketers South African cricketers KwaZulu-Natal cricketers