Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

101 What are we to make of him? was testament to this quality and it was mirrored in the 1930s by Arthur Carr, the Nottinghamshire and England skipper, who stood firmly behind Harold Larwood and Bill Voce during the ‘Bodyline’ controversy – a stance which eventually cost him the county captaincy. Like Carr, Hornby demanded equally fierce loyalty from those who played under him and he was quick to admonish players he thought weren’t pulling their weight. In a time when men were expected to keep their emotions tightly under control, Hornby wore his heart on the sleeve of his cricket shirt and a number of forays into the crowd when he felt spectators were getting out of hand underlined his passion. He was also keen to take up the cudgels when he felt he was being unfairly criticised by the gentlemen of the press and, on occasions, he could be seen chasing a cricket writer out of the ground at Old Trafford when he felt he had been wronged in print. Today Hornby would have been the darling of the tabloids. Of course, Hornby was privileged enough to be able to devote In 1997 this blue plaque was unveiled at Brook House to mark the 150th anniversary of Hornby’s birth, and his achievements as a sportsman.