Ronald William Hooker (22 February 1935 – 22 February 2019) 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. Hooker was a right-handed

batsman In cricket, batting is the act or skill of hitting the ball with a bat to score runs and prevent the loss of one's wicket. Any player who is currently batting is, since September 2021, officially referred to as a batter (historically, the ...

who bowled right-arm

medium pace Fast bowling (also referred to as pace bowling) is one of two main approaches to bowling in the sport of cricket, the other being spin bowling. Practitioners of pace bowling are usually known as ''fast'' bowlers, ''quicks'', or ''pacemen''. T ...

. A successful

all-rounder An all-rounder is a cricketer who regularly performs well at both batting and bowling. Although all bowlers must bat and quite a handful of batsmen do bowl occasionally, most players are skilled in only one of the two disciplines and are consi ...

, Hooker played for the first-class county

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a Historic counties of England, historic county in South East England, southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the Ceremonial counties of ...

and later for the

minor county The National Counties, known as the Minor Counties before 2020, are the cricketing counties of England and Wales that do not have first-class status. The game is administered by the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), which comes unde ...

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...

, in a career which spanned from 1956 to 1975. He was born in

Lower Clapton Clapton is a district of East London, England, in the London Borough of Hackney. Clapton is divided into Upper Clapton, in the north, and Lower Clapton to the south. Clapton railway station lies north-east of Charing Cross. Geography and ori ...

, London.

Middlesex

The years between 1959 and 1963, together with 1966, were his most productive seasons with the bat. In 1959 he scored 1,449 runs in first-class matches at an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

of 30.18. That year, in 52 innings he reached 50 on 13 occasions, though he only went on to a

century A century is a period of 100 years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word ''century'' comes from the Latin ''centum'', meaning ''one hundred''. ''Century'' is sometimes abbreviated as c. A centennial or ...

once. He only exceeded 1,000 runs in one other season, 1963, with 1,083. The previous season he had recorded his highest average, 34.78, but narrowly failed to reach a thousand runs.First-class batting and fielding figures by season
/ref> His most productive period as a bowler was from 1961 to 1966, when he took over 40 wickets every season. During this period, only twice did his average fall outside the narrow range 23.88 to 26.81: in 1966 he averaged 21.70 and in 1962 he had a relatively poor season and averaged 33.44. He took most wickets in 1965, with 90, and also had his best innings analysis of 7/18. Perhaps because he had to do much more bowling than usual that season, he had a very poor season with the bat. He was an excellent close fielder, especially at short leg. Between 1959 and 1965, only in 1964 did he take fewer than 26 catches in a season. In 1961 he held 38 in 26 matches and in 1963, 37 in 30 matches. Arguably his catching was even better in the intervening season, when he held 34 in only 21 matches. In the

John Player League The NatWest Pro40 League was a one-day cricket league for first-class cricket counties in England and Wales. It was inaugurated in 1999, but was essentially the old Sunday League retitled to reflect large numbers of matches being played on days o ...

List A List A cricket is a classification of the limited-overs (one-day) form of the sport of cricket, with games lasting up to eight hours. List A cricket includes One Day International (ODI) matches and various domestic competitions in which the numbe ...

match against Surrey in 1969, his last season for Middlesex, he had the remarkable analysis of 8 overs, 4 maidens, 6 runs, 6 wickets. He took six of the first seven wickets to fall.

Buckinghamshire

Hooker left Middlesex at the end of the 1969 season. He joined

the following season, making his debut 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 ...

against

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 ...

. Hooker played

Minor counties The National Counties, known as the Minor Counties before 2020, are the cricketing counties of England and Wales that do not have first-class status. The game is administered by the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), which comes unde ...

cricket for Buckinghamshire from 1970 to 1975, which included 48 Minor Counties Championship matches. His played his first List A match for Buckinghamshire in the

1970 Gillette Cup The 1970 Gillette Cup was the eighth Gillette Cup, an English limited overs county cricket tournament. It was held between 25 April and 5 September 1970. The tournament was won by Lancashire County Cricket Club who defeated Sussex County Cricket ...

against

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council wa ...

. He made 5 further List A appearances for the county, the last coming against Middlesex in the 1975 Gillette Cup. In List A cricket for Buckinghamshire, he scored 152 runs at an average of 38.00. He made his only List A

half century One half ( : halves) is the irreducible fraction resulting from dividing one by two or the fraction resulting from dividing any number by its double. Multiplication by one half is equivalent to division by two, or "halving"; conversely, ...

against

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...

, scoring 65. He took four wickets at an average of 46.25, with best figures of 2/30. Hooker retired from

county cricket Inter-county cricket matches are known to have been played since the early 18th century, involving teams that are representative of the historic counties of England and Wales. Since the late 19th century, there have been two county championship ...

at the end of the 1975 season.

Personal life

Hooker died on 22 February 2019, his 84th birthday.Ted Clark remembers Ron Hooker
/ref>

References

External links

ESPNcricinfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a ...

Ronald Hooker
at CricketArchive {{DEFAULTSORT:Hooker, Ron 1935 births 2019 deaths People from Lower Clapton Cricketers from the London Borough of Hackney English cricketers Middlesex cricketers Buckinghamshire cricketers