Famous Cricekters No 53 - George Geary

GEORGE GEARY George Geary was born on July 9 1893 at Barwell and was the eldest of sixteen children of a local shoemaker. As a youngster, he played for the Barwell club, and was very soon taken on to the Leicestershire ground staff. Barwell is some 15 miles from the (then) County Ground at Aylestone Road in Leicester, and George would cycle there and back daily whilst engaged in his regular stint of rolling the ground and bowling at the nets all day - the tall, powerfully built young man would take all this in his stride, and still have the stamina and dedication to work on the Barwell ground after supper. He was a right-arm fast-medium bowler, extremely accurate off a short run, and possessed an easy action. This enabled him to bowl well within his strength, and coupled with his good-humoured personality, made him into a stock bowler able to bowl throughout the long day - necessary fo r the Leicestershire team of the ‘20s and ‘30s! Despite this attribute, on a helpful pitch Geary could be very dangerous. Whilst his stock ball was the off-break, his deadliest weapon was the leg-cutter which turned away from the bat very quickly. He has been compared with Sydney Barnes and Maurice Tate. Geary, the batsman, was no stylist - resolute and determined, possessing a good eye, and a hard hitter, he made many valuable runs in the middle order. His batting improved with age and experience, and of his eight first-class centuries, three were made in his final season at the age of 45. Not the least of his assets were his large hands, which grasped 451 catches, principally at slip, during his long career. Most photographs of George Geary, whether individually or part of a team group, show him proudly wearing his England cap, resplendent with the crown and three lions. The reason for this is that he went prematurely bald, as Philip Snow explains in his recollections. A Leicestershire team photograph of 1913 shows the rather serious looking 20-year-old with a fine head of hair. Apart from this, the only capless photograph, from his playing period, that the writer has seen is of the Leicestershire 1926 team, by which time the hairline had receded very sharply! There is a photograph in Playfair Cricket Monthly for September 1961, of a party of former England players who were guests of Rothmans at a reception at Lord’s, on which the trilby (which superseded the cap) is absent. No doubt by then he was too mature in years for his baldness to worry him overmuch, and in any case, amongst his old cronies, the condition was hardly unique! He first appeared for Leicestershire in 1912, a low key start in a handful of matches. It has been said that the first county match that he saw was the first one he played in (at Leicester), but this is probably apocryphal. In 1913, a season of dry fast wickets, the County had problems with their bowling. At various times, accident and injury sidelined Coe, Skelding, and Bill Shipman, whilst John King’s bowling deteriorated sharply. In addition, Ewart Astill, who had been hoped to advance, lost form and eventually his place in the team. Consequently Geary became a regular, and by the end of the season had bowled most overs and had taken most wickets. In the circumstances, his return of 79 wickets at just 26 runs each was a creditable performance for one so inexperienced. His economy was already being commented upon. The second full season - often a graveyard for aspiring young hopefuls - brought further development and success. 1914 saw him take a hundred wickets for the first time. He was Leicestershire’s leading bowler with 115 wickets, and also scored his first fifty. This performance gained him selection for his first representative match, in the Rest of England XI against the MCC South African Team, which was arranged to celebrate the centenary of the present Lord’s ground. S.F.Barnes was to have been playing, but he was apparently making one of his regular demands for more pay. Wisden suggests that he was unable to play “......because of a badly strained leg....”. Geary made a duck and took 2 for 56. At the commencement of the First World War he enlisted in the Royal Air Force, known then as the Royal Flying Corps. Very early on he had a horrible accident by coming into contact with an aeroplane propeller, suffering severe injuries to his left shoulder and thigh; the after effects were still being felt in 1919. So much so that he struggled through that first post-war season, and was a shadow 7