Stanley Christopherson (11 November 1861 – 6 April 1949) was an English amateur

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 and cricket administrator most notable for having been President of the

Marylebone Cricket Club Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London. The club was formerly the governing body of cricket retaining considerable global influence ...

from 1939 to 1946. 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 ...

mainly 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 ...

and made one

Test cricket Test cricket is a form of first-class cricket played at international level between teams representing full member countries of the International Cricket Council (ICC). A match consists of four innings (two per team) and is scheduled to last fo ...

appearance for

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

in 1884. He was one of ten brothers who all played cricket in Kent.Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914'' (revised edition), pp. 108–110.
Available online
at the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. Retrieved 2020-12-21.)

Early life

Christopherson was born in

Kidbrooke Kidbrooke is an area of South East London, England, in the Royal Borough of Greenwich south-east of Charing Cross and north west of Eltham. The district takes its name from the Kyd Brook, a watercourse which runs from Orpington to Lewisham, ...

Blackheath Blackheath may refer to: Places England *Blackheath, London, England ** Blackheath railway station **Hundred of Blackheath, Kent, an ancient hundred in the north west of the county of Kent, England *Blackheath, Surrey, England ** Hundred of Blackh ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

in 1861.Stanley Christopherson

CricInfo 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 d ...

. Retrieved 2017-04-16. He attended Uppingham School where he was a promising bowler in the Cricket XI.Stanley Christopherson
Obituary, ''

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 ...

'', 1949. Retrieved 2017-04-16.

Career in cricket

His first-class cricket debut was made for

in 1883 and he appeared 50 times for the county, mainly between 1883 and 1887.Stanley Christopherson
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-04-16. He was considered "one of the best fast bowlers" of the 1880s, performing particularly well in 1884 when he played for the

Gentlemen against the Players Gentlemen v Players was a long-running series of English first-class cricket matches. Two matches were played in 1806, but the fixture was not played again until 1819. It became an annual event, usually played at least twice each season, exc ...

and for England against the touring Australian Test side and won his county cap. In the same year he played against the Australians for the Gentlemen, taking 8/78, and for Kent, taking 3/12 in 19 overs. An arm injury in 1886 meant that he played little top-class cricket after 1887, although he made his final Kent appearances in 1890. He and his nine brothers played as a team on Blackheath for several seasons with their father making up the final team member.Preston H (1946
Notes by the Editor
''

'', 1946. Retrieved 2017-04-16. Only one brother, Percy played first-class cricket, making one appearance alongside Stanley for Kent in 1887. Percy also played

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

, representing

twice, whilst Stanley played hockey for England. His grandson, Ian Akers-Douglas, captained Kent briefly in the 1930s. Christopherson was President of the

between

1939 This year also marks the start of the Second World War, the largest and deadliest conflict in human history. Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 1 ** Third Reich *** Jews are forbidden to ...

and

1946 Events January * January 6 - The 1946 North Vietnamese parliamentary election, first general election ever in Vietnam is held. * January 7 – The Allies recognize the Austrian republic with its 1937 borders, and divide the country into f ...

, the longest period anyone has held the office. From 1943 to 1945 he was also temporary chairman of the Midland Bank. He died in a nursing home in St John's Wood, London in 1948 aged 87, the last surviving Christopherson brother.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Christopherson, Stanley 1861 births 1949 deaths England Test cricketers English cricketers Kent cricketers Presidents of the Marylebone Cricket Club I Zingari cricketers Gentlemen cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers Gentlemen of England cricketers North v South cricketers Sportspeople from Blackheath, London