Lives in Cricket No 15 - Michael Falcon

Falcon (who batted like he bowled, right-handed) played pluckily, if not faultlessly, for a top score of 79 before being run out. Three more wicketless overs in Eton’s victorious run-chase left him looking more like a batsman than a bowler and he finished the school season with a creditable batting average of 25.50. Those in charge of Norfolk cricket took note of Falcon’s innings and offered him a place in their eleven to play the touring West Indians at Lakenham. Batting again at number four, he made an inauspicious start to what would turn out to be a forty-year career for Norfolk by making a duck in the first innings and only five in his second knock as Norfolk followed on and lost by an innings and 118 runs. Michael Falcon did at least earn his first favourable review in the Eastern Daily Press , lasting long enough in his innings of five for the paper to say that he ‘batted in promising style’. He had a disappointing season playing for Harrow in 1907, failing to push on from the form of the previous year. He did nothing of note against Eton with the bat, failing to reach double figures despite opening the batting, although he did take three wickets as a change bowler. 6 The highlight of his season was an innings of 61 against the tourists from Pennsylvania University, but his batting average dropped to 19.25. That the inveterate compiler of XIs, E.H.D.Sewell, included him in his all-time Harrow side, when writing in 1943, was probably due to the feats that Falcon would later achieve rather than his performances as a schoolboy as such. 7 It was for Norfolk in 1907 that Michael Falcon’s cricketing talent really came to public attention for the first time. In the four matches in which he played, he amassed 458 runs at an average of 76.33, including three centuries; 110 against Bedfordshire, 112 against Cambridgeshire and an unbeaten 102 against Harrow Wanderers, all made in a period of seven days. The Eastern Daily Press commented, several times, that he had a wide range of attacking strokes. 14 Early Life in Norfolk, and Harrow 6 At this point the player in the Harrow team who looked the most promising was Morice Bird, who scored two centuries (one unbeaten) against Eton in 1907 - a feat never equalled in the history of this fixture. On the basis of his early promise, he played in ten Tests before the Great War, but with little impact, and he finished with first-class figures inferior to those of Falcon. He served at Gallipoli and was invalided out of the Army in 1916; he played little after the War and died young. 7 Sewell had Falcon down to bat at nine and so was obviously considering him to be a bowler: as has been described, however, Falcon’s impact as a bowler for Harrow in big games was minimal. Lt-Col Hon Gerald French, like Sewell something of an oddball, put him as a bowler in an all-time Harrow Wanderers side which he published in 1948.