Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

85 in 1948, was awarded the CB in the Birthday Honours in 1951. Thereafter he lived in retirement initially in England, and later at the house of his widowed sister Elsie at Santa Margherita Ligure in Italy, on the Riviera di Levante coast just east of Genoa, where he died suddenly on 16 November 1965 at the age of 70. 145 So cricket and other sports had to fit round a busy military career. Hinde’s main winter sport in his younger days was rugby – he was a forward for Richmond and the Army between 1919/20 and 1923/24, and played in three England trials. He certainly had the physique for it: he was over six feet in height and described as ‘well built’; but at the same time, he was also said to be ‘graceful in movement’. 146 In the summer, when opportunity permitted, he played cricket. He had emerged as a fast bowler in his last year at Blundell’s, taking eight for 19 in 13 overs in one school match in 1913. The report of the school’s season described him as ‘fast right-hand, with an easy natural action. A hard-working bowler who keeps a dangerous length, and if he is unlucky in not getting wickets, cannot often be scored off easily.’ He was less distinguished in other aspects of the game: his batting was never anything to write home about, 147 and the report of the Blundell’s 1912 season was unequivocal about his performance in the third key element: ‘not a good field, slow in getting down to the ball, and does not cover any ground.’ After the First World War, he played with success in military matches and in 1921, qualifying through his Crowthorne connections, he made the first of his 34 Minor Counties appearances for Berkshire. At the end of that season he took five for 33 in the first innings of the Championship challenge match against Staffordshire, in which Berkshire were almost certainly deprived of the title by rain. He was a regular in their side for the next three years – including in 1924, when the county took the title by winning the challenge match against Northumberland. But his best season was 1923. In eight matches in the Minor Counties competition he took 56 wickets, including innings returns of eight for 114 against Devon and eight for 78 against Cornwall, and twice taking ten or more wickets in a match. To this day, only four other bowlers have taken more wickets in a season for Berkshire, and only one has done so when playing in fewer matches. His immediate reward was a place in the Minor Counties (South) side against Minor Counties (North) at The Oval at the end of August, in which Buckinghamshire’s Frank Edwards took 14 wickets; at the other end, Hinde took four of the other six. 145 In another parallel with Michael Harbottle, Hinde’s two brothers had both succumbed in the First World War. The younger, Lt Cyril de Villiers Hinde, was killed in action near Ypres in July 1917 at the age of 19; the older, Capt William Henry Rousseau Hinde, died in hospital at Leeds, aged 27, in the influenza epidemic in October 1918. W.H.R.Hinde played five Minor Counties matches for Berkshire in 1913 and 1914, scoring 58 runs at an average of 5.80, highest score 21, and not bowling. 146 From Hinde’s obituary in The Waggoner , the RASC/RCT in-house journal. 147 A report in the Berkshire Yearbook for 1956, cited in full later, states that his lack of skill as a batsman was ‘in consequence of a blinded eye’. I have no reason to doubt that he may have suffered from this disability, but I have seen no reference to it in any other source. In the Wickets