Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

59 he played at Lord’s in the annual Under-16s match between a Lord’s XI and C.F.Tufnell’s XI, batting for the Lord’s XI alongside his brother John. 89 He captained the Lord’s XI in the same fixture in 1932, and then spent his last three school years in the Marlborough eleven, where however he did not set the world alight. From the figures in Wisden his dogged left-handed batting in the school’s middle order brought him just 753 runs over the seasons 1933 to 1935, with a highest score of 72 against Harrow in 1934. He was at Sandhurst for the 1936 and 1937 seasons, and also in 1936 he began his long, if intermittent, association with the Dorset Minor Counties side. Playing under a residential qualification – the family home was at Wareham – and now opening the batting, he appeared in thirteen Minor Counties Championship matches for Dorset between 1936 and 1938, scoring 83 against Cornwall in his third innings for the county, and 96 against Wiltshire in 1937. By 1938 the Army’s only remaining first-class fixtures were their games against the two Universities, their matches against the other Services and the overseas tourists having been downgraded to two-day games earlier in the decade. Despite his successes in the Minor Counties competition and for various Sandhurst-based military sides, Harbottle was not selected for the match against Cambridge University at Fenner’s in May. But representative Army 89 Harbottle’s two siblings, older brothers Anthony and John, were both killed in the Second World War. Runs Aplenty The Sandhurst side of 1937. Standing (l to r): J.North, B.E.W.Henson (wk), S.I.Howard-Jones, J.M.Hutton, A.F.Campbell, A.G.Roberts, J.Weston, J.Clark. Seated: D.R.Dalglish, G.A.F.Steede, Capt J.P.A.Graham, M.N.Harbottle, A.M.Champion, J.W.Hodges.