Minor Counties Championship 1907

12 100 dismissals (2) 104 [74ct/30st] Davies, T Devon 101 [77ct/24st] Watts, G H Cambridgeshire 50 dismissals (4) 73 [64ct/9st] Watts, E Berkshire 70 [31ct/39st] J H Brain Glamorgan 60 [47ct/13st] E E Apthorp Bedfordshire 52 [38ct/14st] E J Diver Monmouthshire [Note: The wicket-keeping dismissals given above are those where the player is known to have been the wicket-keeper. The player may have taken other catches in the outfield and there may be catches taken by him where it is not known whether he was the wicket-keeper or not] 50 catches (2) 53 Turnbull, G Durham 50 Golding, A J Hertfordshire 100 matches 104 Bancroft, W J Glamorgan Final Season A number of players making their final appearance for their county in 1907 deserve special mention Rev F N Bird – Buckinghamshire 1896 to 1907 (born 13 December 1875; died 3 March 1965) Played 49 matches, scoring 2,043 runs at 27.24. Having first played for Buckinghamshire at the age of 20, by the time of his death Frederick Nash Bird was the last survivor of the team that represented the county in its first full season in the Championship. Bird played ten matches for Buckinghamshire between 1896 and 1898, but he enjoyed little initial success with the bat, his main contribution being as an exceptional outfielder. In 1899 and 1900 he made six first-class appearances for Gloucestershire, scoring 135 runs at 15.00. Returning to Buckinghamshire in 1901, he showed greatly improved form and soon became one of the mainstays of a weak batting side. He hit two centuries for the county, both against Berkshire: 133 at Slough in 1903 and 104 at Reading the following year. In 1906 he was chosen to represent the Minor Counties against the touring West Indians. A schoolmaster, Bird taught for several years at Wellingborough School, whose chaplain he became after being ordained in 1908. In 1908 and 1909 he chose to play his vacation cricket for Northamptonshire, for whom his ten matches brought him 263 runs at 17.53. Moving to Lowestoft College as headmaster, in 1910 he played five matches for Suffolk, the county of his birth, and he appeared twice more in 1914. After the Great War, by which time he was running a preparatory school at Exeter, Bird switched allegiance to Devon, for whom he made 21 championship appearances between 1920 and 1925, also becoming Secretary of the County Club. W H Brain – Glamorgan 1897 to 1907 (born 21 July 1870; died 20 November 1934) Willliam Henry Brain (or “Sam” as he was widely known) was Glamorgan’s first regular wicket-keeper in the Minor County Championship. Like his older brother Jack, he was educated at Clifton College, before going up to Oxford to read Law at Oriel College and then joining the family’s brewing business in South Wales in the mid -1890s. During the early 1890s he also played for Gloucestershire in the County Championship, and in 1893 he created a unique record by making three stumpings in consecutive deliveries as schoolboy leg-spinner Charles Townsend took a hat-trick against Somerset at Cheltenham College. No other wicket- keeper in first-class cricket has so far matched his feat.