William Foord-Kelcey (21 April 1854 – 3 January 1922) was an English barrister, academic and 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. 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

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

and

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 ...

Early life

Foord-Kelcey was born at

Smeeth Smeeth is a mostly agricultural land use village and civil parish, centred east of Ashford in the Ashford Borough of Kent, England. Geography Smeeth is a small village in population near Mersham Hatch Park on the A20 road from Ashford to Fol ...

near

Ashford, Kent Ashford is a town in the county of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour, Kent, River Great Stour at the southern or Escarpment, scarp edge of the North Downs, about southeast of central London and northwest of Folkestone by road. In the ...

as William Foord. The family changed its name to Foord-Kelcey in May 1872.William Foord-Kelcey

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 2017-06-29.Ambrose D (2003
Brief profile of William Foord-Kelcey
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-06-29. He was educated at

Chatham House Grammar School (May Chatham House Flourish) , established = 1797 , free_label_3 = Merged , free_3 = 2011 , closed = , type = Grammar schoolAcademy , religious_affiliation = , president = , head_label = , head ...

Ramsgate Ramsgate is a seaside resort, seaside town in the district of Thanet District, Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century. In 2001 it had a population of about 40,000. In 2011, according to t ...

and at

Exeter College, Oxford Exeter College (in full: The Rector and Scholars of Exeter College in the University of Oxford) is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England and the fourth-oldest college of the un ...

Cricket career

At Oxford, he was a member of the University cricket XI in 1874 and in 1875, making his first-class debut for the university against

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 ...

(MCC) in May 1874. He played in nine matches for Oxford, including the 1874 and 1875

University match The University Match in a cricketing context is generally understood to refer to the annual fixture between Oxford University Cricket Club and Cambridge University Cricket Club. From 2001, as part of the reorganisation of first-class cricket, ...

es.Foord-Kelcey, Mr William
Obituaries in 1922, ''

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 ...

'', 1923. Retrieved 2017-06-29.William Foord-Kelcey
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-06-29. Foord-Kelcey made his debut for

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 July 1874. He played 64 times for the county side, making his final appearances in 1883.Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914'' (revised edition), pp. 175–176.
Available online
at the

Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) was founded in England in 1973 for the purpose of researching and collating information about the history and statistics of cricket. Originally called the Association of Cricket Stati ...

. Retrieved 2020-12-21.) He took eight wickets in an innings twice for Kent, with his best bowling figures of 8/49 taken against

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...

. He was awarded his

county cap In sport, a cap is a player's appearance in a game at international level. The term dates from the practice in the United Kingdom of awarding a cap to every player in an international match of rugby football and association football. In the ea ...

in 1882. Foord-Kelcey was described in his

Wisden ''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 ...

obituary as a "hard-hitting batsman, a round-armed bowler of great pace, and a capital field at mid-off".

Professional career and later life

He began studying law at the

Inner Temple The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional associations for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wal ...

in 1877 and was called to the bar in 1880. He was appointed as a lecturer at the

Royal Military Academy, Woolwich The Royal Military Academy (RMA) at Woolwich, in south-east London, was a British Army military academy for the training of commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. It later also trained officers of the Royal Corps of Sig ...

and in 1903 became professor of Mathematics and Mechanics at the academy. He was at the RMA for 44 years and was awarded the OBE in 1919.Foord-Kelcey John Mordaunt
Tonbridge at War. Retrieved 2017-06-29. Foord-Kelcey's brother

John John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Secon ...

also played first-class cricket for Oxford University and his nephew Osbert Mordaunt played for Somerset. His son, also named John, was killed in action in July 1916 at the start of the

Battle of the Somme The Battle of the Somme ( French: Bataille de la Somme), also known as the Somme offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British Empire and French Third Republic against the German Empire. It took place bet ...

during the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Foord-Kelcey died at Woolwich in 1922 aged 68. His house in

Margate Margate is a seaside resort, seaside town on the north coast of Kent in south-east England. The town is estimated to be 1.5 miles long, north-east of Canterbury and includes Cliftonville, Garlinge, Palm Bay, UK, Palm Bay and Westbrook, Kent, ...

is marked with a blue plaque.Heritage Features Quiz No.4
Margate Civic Society Newsletter, Spring 2008. Retrieved 2017-06-29.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Foord-Kelcey, William 1854 births 1922 deaths People educated at Chatham House Grammar School English cricketers Kent cricketers Oxford University cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers Alumni of Exeter College, Oxford Members of the Inner Temple Gentlemen of the South cricketers Gentlemen of Kent cricketers People from Smeeth Cricketers from Kent