Minor Counties Championship 1914

E J Diver – Monmouthshire 1905-1914 (born 20 March 1861; died 27 December 1924) Born in Cambridge Edwin James Diver was a right-hand middle order batsman and wicket-keeper. He played 71 matches for Monmouthshire scoring 1,916 runs at 17.90 with one century, 120 versus Cornwall at Newport in 1906, and 8 fifties. He took 77 catches, 67 as wicket-keeper, and secured 33 stumpings. An occasional right-arm medium paced bowler, he took 2 wickets at 41.50. He played many other matches in South Wales and his club cricket was for the Newport Athletic Club. A first-class career took Diver first to Surrey where he played 75 matches between 1883 and 1886 scoring 2,643 runs at 22.40 with one century, 143 against Oxford University in 1885, and 18 fifties. He played 118 matches for Warwickshire in the period 1894-1901 scoring 4,280 runs at 24.04 with 4 centuries, the highest being 184 against Leicestershire at Edgbaston in 1899, and 25 fifties. His first-class wickets were in one innings, 6 for 58 for Warwickshire against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge in 1894. He also played first-class matches for an England XI versus Australia, for both the Gentlemen and the Players, and for the South and Midland Counties among others. His first-class career consisted of 205 matches, 7,245 runs at 23.00, 5 centuries, 45 fifties, 117 catches, including 22 as wicket-keeper, 4 stumpings, and 6 wickets at 51.83. Diver played 3 matches as a goal-keeper for Aston Villa in 1891-92. He was found dead, in bed, from heart failure in Pontardawe near Neath, Glamorgan on 27 December 1924 aged 63. His brother George was a fast bowler for Cambridgeshire. R Falconer – Norfolk 1912-1914 (born 10 November 1886; died 8 March 1966) Roderick Falconer’s career for Norfolk in the Minor Counties Championship was brief but memorable. A professional, his debut season in 1912 was outstanding as his right-arm medium pace enabled him to take 65 wickets in a summer of just eight matches – still the record number of wickets in a season for a Norfolk bowler. Averaging just 7.95, he recorded nine hauls of five or more wickets in an innings and three hauls of ten wickets or more in a match. Although Falconer could not maintain such form, he remained a force in the next two seasons and, when the Great War intervened, he had taken as many as 125 wickets in just 24 Championship matches, each costing him an economical 11.25 runs. He averaged just 14.00 with the bat, with his best being an unbeaten 52 against Cambridgeshire in 1912. Before joining Norfolk he had played in seven first- class matches for Northamptonshire between 1907 and 1910 but was rarely asked to bowl and took just nine wickets. Falconer served with the Northamptonshire Regiment during the Great War and reached the rank of Sergeant; fighting in France, he suffered gunshot wounds to the left leg in 1918, was declared as unfit for duty, and played no more ‘big’ cricket. In recognition for his efforts, the Norfolk Committee granted him a one-off payment of £25. In 1939 he was reported as being the manager of a gentlemen’s clothing and outfitting shop. E Gibson – Norfolk 1904-1914 (born 16 November 1883; died 4 October 1958) Ted Gibson played 90 matches for Norfolk in the Minor Counties Championship, taking 307 wickets at 16.82 runs apiece. Norfolk had a disastrous run in the Championship in 1900 and 1901, sharing last place in both years and failing to record a single win. With no ‘home grown’ bowlers of merit available the County Club felt obliged to take the drastic step of signing two professional bowlers and dropping out of the Championship whilst they qualified to play for Norfolk ‘by residence’. One of those was slow left-armer Ted Gibson, a Lancastrian who duly made his debut in competitive cricket at the start of the 1904 season (the other bowler was Billy Smith – see Annual for 1909). At first he was relatively unsuccessful but he was a ‘late bloomer’, taking 46 wickets in 1908 (at 17.15), 58 in 1909 (at 14.15) and 49 (at 12.51) in 1910 – in the first two of these three years he can be said to have ‘carried’ the County’s attack. His best analysis in an innings was 8 15