Charles Harry Bull (29 March 1909 – 28 May 1939) was an English sportsman who played in 175

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 ...

matches between 1929 and 1939 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 later for

Worcestershire County Cricket Club Worcestershire County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Worcestershire. Its Vitality Blast T20 team has been rebranded ...

. Bull also represented England at

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

, winning a number of

World Table Tennis Championships The World Table Tennis Championships are table tennis competitions sanctioned by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF). The World Championships have been held since 1926, biennially since 1957. Five individual events, which include men ...

medals between 1928 and 1932.

Cricket career

After having made a number of appearances for Kent's Second XI in the late 1920s, Bull made his

debut against

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

in July 1929; he scored 23 in his only innings and sent down three overs for 19. He played a further two first-class games that season, and another one in 1930, but had little success and left the county at the end of the season.Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part Two: 1919–1939'', pp. 28–29.
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 2020-07-01.) Bull's

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...

debut came against the

New Zealanders New Zealanders ( mi, Tāngata Aotearoa), colloquially known as Kiwis (), are people associated with New Zealand, sharing a common history, culture, and language (New Zealand English). People of various ethnicities and national origins are citiz ...

in May 1931, when opening the batting he scored just 8 and 6, but his career for his new county truly began in 1933. In that year he made 25 appearances, scoring 743 runs at 21.85, though his highest score was only 79. The four seasons from 1934 to 1937 were the best years of Bull's career. He passed a thousand runs in each season, making five centuries, the highest of these being the first: 161 against

Glamorgan , HQ = Cardiff , Government = Glamorgan County Council (1889–1974) , Origin= , Code = GLA , CodeName = Chapman code , Replace = * West Glamorgan * Mid Glamorgan * South Glamorgan , Motto ...

in June 1934. His most productive summer was that of 1937, when he hit 1,619 runs including two centuries, this being the only season of his career in which he reached three figures more than once. Bull played 15 times in 1938, but passed 50 only three times and scored under 500 runs in the season. In late May 1939, during the weekend of the match against

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It is located north-east of London a ...

, he was killed in a car accident which also left his team-mate Syd Buller injured.

Table Tennis career

Bull spent his winters playing

and was one of the top players in England. He represented England several times in the

. In the 1928 Stockholm World Championship, he was one of the three teenagers in the English team with

Fred Perry Frederick John Perry (18 May 1909 – 2 February 1995) was a British tennis and table tennis player and former world No. 1 from England who won 10 Majors including eight Grand Slam tournaments and two Pro Slams single titles, as well ...

and

Adrian Haydon Arthur 'Adrian' Haydon (1911 – 12 September 1973) was a male international table tennis player from England. Table tennis career He started playing table tennis aged just 7 years-old. During the 1927-28 season he was world ranked 6. He won f ...

. The England team pulled off a sensation defeating the World Champions Hungary 7–2 in the league. In his three matches, Bull defeated the defending champion

Roland Jacobi Roland Jacobi (9 March 1893 – 22 May 1951) was a male international table tennis player from Hungary. He was the first ever men's singles world champion at the 1926 World Table Tennis Championships and won six medals in singles, doubles and t ...

, and

Zoltán Mechlovits Zoltán Mechlovits (1891 – 25 March 1951 in Budapest) was a male former international table tennis player from Hungary. Table tennis career From 1926 and 1929 he won eleven medals in singles, doubles, and team events in the World Table Tennis ...

and

Laszlo Bellak Laszlo Bellak (February 12, 1911 – September 20, 2006) was a Hungarian and United States, American table tennis player. Table tennis career He represented Hungary 59 times in international competition. He won 21 medals at the World Championshi ...

who would play the singles final in 1928. In the three-way play-off to decide the medals, England lost to Austria and Hungary after Fred Perry twisted his ankle. Bull again defeated Mechlovits but lost to Bellak. Bull won a silver in

1931 Events January * January 2 – South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics. * January 4 – German pilot Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa. * January 22 – Sir I ...

, and another bronze in

1929 This year marked the end of a period known in American history as the Roaring Twenties after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in a worldwide Great Depression. In the Americas, an agreement was brokered to end the Cristero War, a Catholic ...

with the England team.WTTC results
With Perry, Bull won a silver in men's doubles in

1928 Events January * January – British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly proving the existence of DNA. * January 1 – Eastern Bloc emigration and defection: Boris Bazhanov, J ...

. Perry would go on to win three

Wimbledon Wimbledon most often refers to: * Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London * Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships Wimbledon may also refer to: Places London * ...

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

singles titles in the 1930s. Bull also won bronzes in

and

1932 Events January * January 4 – The British authorities in India arrest and intern Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel. * January 9 – Sakuradamon Incident (1932), Sakuradamon Incident: Korean nationalist Lee Bong-chang fails in his effort ...

for mixed doubles and men's doubles respectively. The Prague tournament of 1932 was the last time he represented England in table tennis. As professional cricketer, Bull paid his own expenses to take part in the table tennis World Championships. When some countries protested against a professional sportsman taking part in the game, the

International Table Tennis Federation The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) is the governing body for all national table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the p ...

responded by removing the distinction between amateurs and professionals, one of the first sports federations to do so.

Death

Bull was killed on the night of Sunday, 28 May 1939, when the car he was passenger in rammed into the rear of a stationary lorry. Bull was playing in the Worcestershire-Essex county match at the time, but Sunday was a rest day. He had spent the day playing golf and was returning to the hotel with four fellow players. William Joseph Bone, the driver, was blinded by the light of a car travelling in the opposite direction. The lorry had its rear light damaged. Its driver, Hyman Bunner, was underneath the lorry repairing it when the car hit it at around 45 miles per hour. Both drivers were exonerated of any blame.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bull, Charlie English cricketers Kent cricketers Worcestershire cricketers 1909 births 1939 deaths Road incident deaths in England English male table tennis players Sportspeople from Lewisham