Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

63 Envoi Michael Harbottle was married twice – first to Alison Jane Humfress in 1940, and following a divorce, to Eirwen Simonds (née Jones) in 1972. The first marriage produced a son and a daughter; the son, Simon Neale Harbottle, followed his father into the Army and played for them in a non- first-class match against Oxford University in 1973, bowling out Imran Khan in the University’s first innings, and in turn being bowled by Imran for 38, when the Army batted. He also took three of the four wickets that fell in the University’s second innings. Harbottle’s newspaper obituaries give a kindly insight into the character of this devoted and sincere campaigner for peace. The Guardian called him a ‘gentle warrior’, though it also mentioned ‘a hasty temper’. The Independent ’s obituary described him as ‘mischievous … [but] with a direct common-sense approach’. A follow-up letter in The Guardian tells us more: ‘[He] really enjoyed life. In particular he enjoyed human beings. He was a good companion who carried over into his work for peace the resourceful and considerate camaraderie that turns a good soldier into a fine leader … [He] was a good man and a brave one’. 97 Harbottle died in hospital at Oxford on 30 April 1997, at the age of 80. 98 Cricket was probably not uppermost in the minds of those who subsequently paid tribute to him, nor when the Last Post and Reveille were sounded at his memorial service at St James’, Piccadilly in July of that year. But there is one final cricketing memory that deserves to be recorded here. In Wisden Cricket Monthly in December 1984, David Frith reported on a sale of cricketana at Southampton in which the star lot – one that ‘enjoyed much exposure on local television and radio’ – was the box that Harbottle wore at the crease for 27 years. Reported to be ‘the final resting-place of a bee which stung its owner during the 1934 Marlborough v Cheltenham match’ [please feel free to wince at this point], it had also provided protection during his 156 at Camberley in 1938, and indeed for the rest of his active cricketing career. It sold for £50, bought by a member of his family who, in Frith’s nicely-chosen words, was ‘presumably unable to face the future without the family heirloom’. So, for all his achievements away from the cricket field, Michael Harbottle’s family valued him as a cricketer too; one who died with the distinction – still unique – of being the only Englishman to score a century in his one and only first-class innings. Scotland’s full-back ‘Cricket was always my first love’. Not words you’d expect to hear from a Scotsman with four caps for his country at rugby. And yet … For the only Briton other than Michael Harbottle to score a century in his one and only first-class innings is a friendly, quietly-spoken and modest 97 Letter from Professor Adam Curle, printed in The Guardian , 9 May 1997. 98 His death certificate confirms 30 April as the date of his death, and not 1 May as given in Wisden and some contemporary newspapers. Runs Aplenty