Lives in Cricket No 15 - Michael Falcon

Minor Counties Championship: ‘Team of the Century’ Career Details Batting Bowling Runs Ave Wkt Ave Mike Nurton (Oxfordshire) 12713 33.36 7 39.43 Arthur Sutton (Cheshire) 10540 28.64 435 20.23 Nick Folland (Devon) 10132 51.69 26 37.80 Charles Titchmarsh (Herts) 10517 37.97 1 75.00 Stephen Plumb (Norfolk, Lincs) 12266 41.86 328 32.32 Michael Falcon (Norfolk) 11538 33.84 690 16.52 D.W. ‘Bill’ Stokes (Berkshire) 5365 25.18 1 51.00 Sydney Barnes (Staffordshire) 4806 21.36 1376 7.99 Cyril Perkins (Suffolk) 2044 15.36 779 13.34 Fred Burton (Hertfordshire) 1894 11.14 1051 17.04 Frank Edwards (Surrey II, Bucks) 1099 8.20 1059 11.06 Notes: The details given relate to performances in the Minor Counties Championship only. Stokes was selected as the wicket-keeper; he took 177 catches and made 77 stumpings in the competition. The figures for Nurton, Titchmarsh, Burton, Stokes and Barnes were kindly provided by Julian Lawton Smith, Bob Simons, Roy New, Tony Webb and Tony Percival. Figures for Perkins and Edwards derive from the books written by Colin Munford and Douglas Miller listed in the bibliography at the end of this book. Those for Sutton, Folland and Plumb are from the Minor Counties Handbooks of 1987, 2002 and 2003. The figures for Falcon are from the author’s research. As the ACS Minor Counties project progresses, some of these figures may, of course, be corrected. Falcon as All-Rounder It is apparent from the table that Falcon was selected as an all-rounder. So howmuch of an all-rounder was he? Sometimes it is stated that a quantitative measure of an all-rounder is a player whose batting average is higher than his bowling average. For purposes of comparison between all-rounders, dividing an individual’s batting average by his bowling average yields a number which will be referred to as his ‘ratio’ and which gives an indication of the relative effectiveness of that all-rounder; the higher the ratio, the more outstanding the all-rounder. Falcon’s batting and bowling averages in the Minor Counties Championship are 33.84 and 16.52 respectively; giving a ratio of 2.05. This is a great achievement over such an extremely long career, matched by very few others at this level; one who does measure up is Sydney Barnes, whose career bowling average is so low that his modest batting average is sufficiently high to qualify. None of the other 124 Michael Falcon’s Legacy