Famous Cricketers No 82 - H.E. 'Tom' Dollery

TOM DOLLERY When considering the merits of cricketers, their prowess as a batsman or bowler is usually the first thing that springs to mind, but for a few their skill in captaincy would be paramount. Of Englishmen, Brearley, Fender, Jardine, Surridge, Sellers and Illingworth would probably be in this category, and Tom Dollery certainly would be, for Dollery was the first professional captain of a county to achieve universal acclaim for his leadership skills, over and above his personal success with the bat. Horace Edgar Dollery was born on 15th of October 1914 at 67, Wantage Road, Reading, Berkshire, the third and youngest child, after brother Cyril and sister Florence (“Florrie”), of Robert Dollery and Emily (née Ireson). His father was a Master Engraver by profession, specialising in delicate, detailed, miniature work, and he could remember his father engraving the Lord’s Prayer onto an old, tiny, silver threepenny coin in his spare time at home. His elder brother Cyril was the academic of the family and he won a scholarship from Reading School to Oxford University, and his son, Tom’s nephew, became Sir Colin Dollery, knighted for his work in medical research at Hammersmith Hospital. When I was shown Dollery’s birth certificate, the date recorded, the 15th, didn’t somehow ring true, and sure enough on checking Wisden and other references, his birthdate was shown as the 14th. His widow, Jeanne, explained that his mother always maintained that he was born just before midnight, but whoever filled in the birth details the next morning, must have assumed he was born in the early hours and so put down 15th. However Tom and the family always celebrated his birthday on the 14th, despite what the certificate said, and he always quoted the 14th as his date of birth on documents and suchlike which is how it got into all the reference books. When I casually mentioned my discovery to Rob Brooke his ears pricked up immediately, and sure enough Dollery’s birthdate was altered to the 15th in the next edition of Wisden . He was always known as Horace in his childhood and youth, and his wife and his close family always addressed him by this name throughout his lifetime. The nickname “Tom”, (given to him when he was playing for a local Birmingham soccer team in 1932), somehow stuck to him though, and this was how Dollery was known to his playing colleagues, the press and the sporting public at large for the rest of his life. The Dollerys were a large family all descended from, and living around the Reading area. The name is fairly uncommon and the research that the family has done on it revealed that it was most common in and around Oxford and Reading and the Hayling Island area of Hampshire, and that there are quite a few of them in the U.S.A. My limited research suggests that it is either derived from the Old English word “dawl”, meaning boundary, (“one who lives near a boundary”), or is Norman and means “one who comes from Ouilly”, the name of five villages in the Calvados region of Normandy. It was such an unusual name that it was uncanny when Keith Dollery, absolutely no relation, joined the Warwickshire staff from far away Tasmania in 1951, and Tom thereafter had to have “H.E” printed after his name on cricket scorecards. It almost seemed pre-ordained that young Dollery would become a cricketer, as the garden of the family home backed onto the well known biscuit manufacturer, Huntley and Palmer’s cricket ground, which the Berkshire Minor Counties also used for their home games. Some of his earliest memories were of the sound of bat on ball and he recalled the image of men in whites flitting about as he peered through the garden fence. One of his boyhood friends was Ernie Croom, the youngest son of the groundsman, A.B.Croom, and Ernie’s oldest brother was Arthur, who went on to open the batting for Warwickshire from 1922-1939. Occasionally Arthur would bring fellowWarwickshire players home with him and the two youngsters would bowl to them in the nets. So young Dollery spent most of his 5