Harold Gimblett
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Role | Batsman | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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International information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
National side | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Test debut (cap 290) | 27 June 1936 v India | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Last Test | 24 June 1939 v West Indies | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Domestic team information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Years | Team | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1935–1954 | Somerset | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Career statistics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Source: Cricinfo, 31 August 2009 |
Harold Gimblett (19 October 1914 – 30 March 1978) was a cricketer who played for Somerset and England. He was known for his fast scoring as an opening batsman and for the much-repeated story of his debut. In a book first published in 1982, the cricket writer and Somerset historian David Foot wrote: "Harold Gimblett is the greatest batsman Somerset has ever produced."[1] Gimblett is a member of the Gimblett family, an Anglo-French family who arrived in Britain in the early 18th century from Metz. The family spread out over Britain, with branches located in Somerset, Scotland, and South Wales. There are variations of the spelling of the name, including Gimlet, Gimlette, and Gimblette.
Gimblett scored at a fast rate throughout his career, and hit 265 sixes – "surely a record for a regular opening batsman", wrote Eric Hill, his postwar opening partner and thereafter a long-time journalist watcher of Somerset.[2] He appeared, however, in only three Tests, none of them against Australia, and he left first-class cricket abruptly, suffering from mental health problems that would remain with him to the end of his life.
Background
Harold Gimblett was born at Bicknoller in the Quantock Hills in west Somerset, where his family had been farmers since the 15th century.[3] He was the youngest of three brothers and was educated at the local school at Williton and then at the fee-paying West Buckland School just over the border in Devon.[4]
He played cricket successfully at school and for Watchet Cricket Club. In 1931, he left school; in August of that year, he made the first of his significant innings. In the match between Watchet and Wellington Cricket Club, he came to the wicket with Watchet on 37 for seven, chasing a total of 160. With another teenage batsman, Allan Pearse, Gimblett hit off the runs, making 91 himself.[5] A year later, he was co-opted into the Somerset Stragglers team, a peripatetic amateur team which played matches across south west England, composed of former public school players of varying abilities, some of whom were the amateurs who formed a large contingent of Somerset county players up to the Second World War. In his first match for the Stragglers team, against Wellington School, he made 142 in 75 minutes.[6]
Gimblett briefly moved to London to work, but city life was not to his taste and he returned home, resuming cricket for the Watchet club. One of the patrons of Watchet cricket, the town tailor W. G. Penny, who was also prominent in Somerset County Cricket Club, recommended him for a trial with the county, though there appears to have been some reservations over his temperament and his impetuous batting.[7] There is also, in the same source, some suggestion that Gimblett himself was reluctant to test himself against top-class cricketers.
Even so, at the start of the 1935 season, Gimblett was invited to go to Taunton for a two-week trial with the county. The trial seems not to have been a success, but it led directly to the sensation that was Gimblett's first-class cricket debut.
First-class debut
Gimblett's entry into first-class cricket in May 1935 was instant legend. Wisden, in its obituary of him in 1979, wrote: "The start of his career was so sensational that any novelist attributing it to his hero would have discredited the book."[8]
Having a two-week trial with Somerset, Gimblett had been told, before the period was over, that he had no future as a first-class cricketer. Accounts vary as to how this decision was reached. Gimblett himself, quoted in David Foot's biography, which relies heavily on material taped by Gimblett in the years immediately before his death, said he was told by the county secretary and former captain,
On the final Friday of Gimblett's trial, Somerset found themselves a player short for the match that started the following day against Essex at Frome when the amateur Laurie Hawkins reported in sick. Gimblett was told to get himself to Frome: Daniell arranged for the wicketkeeper Wally Luckes, who had a car, to pick him up from Bridgwater. Gimblett missed the bus from Taunton, and hitched a lift in a lorry. Somerset won the toss and chose to bat: three batsmen were out for 35, and at lunch the score was 105 for five. Soon after lunch, Dickie Burrough was out and Gimblett came to the wicket with Somerset six wickets down for 107 runs, joining Arthur Wellard.[11]
Gimblett's first run came off his third ball, and shortly afterwards he was hitting the leg-break and googly bowler
The innings turned Gimblett into an instant celebrity. Foot's biography records that Fleet Street writers and photographers descended on the Gimblett farm at Bicknoller; the former cricketer Jack Hobbs congratulated Gimblett in his newspaper column, but also warned that such a start would be difficult to sustain.[14]
So it proved. Gimblett retained his place for the next match, against Middlesex at Lord's, only because of another injury to a regular player, and though he top-scored with 53 in the second innings (still batting at No 8), he himself was injured and missed the next month. Returning to the side in mid-season, he played with little success, though he took a few wickets with his medium-pace, including four wickets for just 10 runs against Gloucestershire at Bath, which would remain his best first-class bowling performance.[15] Wisden Cricketers' Almanack summed up his first first-class season in its 1936 edition, noting that he "failed to maintain his early form". It went on: "Almost entirely a forward player, he appeared to pay little heed to defence, and in the end lack of experience contributed to his undoing. Still, shrewd observers maintain that he possesses distinct possibilities, and with further opportunities he may become more than a useful member of the side."[16]
Test cricketer
That Wisden assessment was made to look unduly modest within weeks of the start of the 1936 season. Regular opening batsman
Gimblett's first Test appearance was the most successful of his short Test career. In a low-scoring match in which the Indian team led England by 13 on the first innings, it was Gimblett's top-scoring 67 not out in the second innings that brought victory to his side.[21] England had been set 107 to win, but with a damp pitch and uncertain weather, "the task could not be regarded as an easy one," Wisden wrote.[22] It went on: "As Gimblett got the pace of the wicket, he developed sound hitting powers and hooked superbly." In partnership with Maurice Turnbull, who made 37, Gimblett hit off the runs in 100 minutes, playing "with much skill and verve".
Gimblett's status as one of the coming men of English cricket was confirmed by his selection on the Players' side for the
David Foot's biography of Gimblett indicates that this 1936 season, although one of his most successful, also showed early signs of the illness that was to afflict him later. He reacted badly to being criticised for dropping an easy catch in the Old Trafford Test, and when he himself was dropped from the team for the final Test, he responded with relief: "'Thank goodness that's over,' he said to anyone within earshot."[27] Foot wrote: "The Lord's and Old Trafford Tests became painful rather than treasured memories; he pleaded silently that he would not ever be selected again."[28]
In contrast to the drama of 1936, the 1937 and 1938 seasons were quiet ones for Gimblett. Other batsmen of his own age, such as
Gimblett had another of his "purple patches" early in the 1939 season, which was his most successful so far. He scored 905 runs in the first seven Somerset matches, including five centuries in successive matches.[31] Wisden noted, though, that he now revealed "less of the electrifying methods that first brought him to the front".[31] The return to form brought him back into Test contention. He was picked for the first Test against West Indies at Lord's, opening with Hutton and making 22 and 20.[32] In the second innings, with England needing fast runs for victory, he hit the first two balls bowled by fast bowler Leslie Hylton for four and six.[33] He did not retain his place in the Test team, but played in the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord's, making 52 in the Players' first innings.[34] In the season as a whole, he made 1922 runs at an average of 40.89.[25]
War service
Gimblett volunteered for the Royal Air Force for the Second World War, but was allocated instead to the Fire Service, and saw duty in badly bombed cities such as Plymouth and Bristol.[35]
Postwar county stalwart
In the eight seasons after the Second World War Gimblett was the mainstay of the Somerset batting. Without taming his aggressive instincts, he had become more judicious in his shot selection, and though he remained until the end of his career likely to smash the first ball of a match for six, he also took on the role of senior batsman in a Somerset side that was usually weak in batting. In the 1946 season, Somerset's best for more than 50 years, he made 1947 runs at an average of 49.92 runs per innings, the highest seasonal average of his career.[25] There were seven centuries, the most of any season, and they included 231 against Middlesex at Taunton, his first double century and part of what Wisden termed a "merciless onslaught" by the Somerset batsmen.[36][37]
The return in 1947 was lower, but in 1948, with the Somerset batting seeming ever more dependent on him for runs, he responded with all of the four centuries scored by the team in the summer, and one of them was his own highest score and the highest innings made to that stage by a Somerset batsman: 310 against
But it didn't end quite yet. In 1949, Gimblett passed 2000 runs for the season for the first time in his career, his 2093 in the season being a new record for Somerset at the time.[25] He also hit two centuries in a match for the first time in his career, with 115 and an unbeaten 127 in the game against Hampshire at Taunton.[41] "The feeling that if he got out almost all was over never affected his play," Wisden commented of his efforts across the season.[42]
The pattern was repeated in 1950, but with an odd mid-season twist. The England Test side was being outplayed by the West Indies, and specifically by two previously unknown spin bowlers, Sonny Ramadhin and Alf Valentine. After a bad defeat in the second Test at Lord's, the England selectors sent for Gimblett for the third match at Trent Bridge with the apparent aim of having him hit the two spinners out of their rhythm. It would have been Gimblett's first Test for 11 years and the move, according to Foot, was highly popular, and not just in Somerset.[43] But just before the match, Gimblett developed a large boil, a "carbuncle", on the back of his neck. He was dosed with penicillin and travelled to Nottingham. "A nation's sporting press meticulously documented the carbuncle's throb-rate," Foot writes. It was to no avail: Gimblett withdrew from the match, and was not picked again.
At the end of the 1950 English season, however, he ventured abroad for the first time, taking part in a Commonwealth tour of India and Sri Lanka and opening the batting in all five of the representative games. He had some success on the tour, scoring one century, the only one of the 50 centuries in his career not to be made for Somerset.[44] Perhaps more typically, he was homesick and unhappy: "At first I wondered whether I'd picked up a bug. But it was purely mental," he said in a tape transcribed in his biography.[45] Lighter by about 12 kg, he struggled for runs more than usually in the 1951 season, and took a long break from cricket in July, returning to some form afterwards.
Somerset awarded Gimblett a benefit match in 1952, though perhaps typically he grumbled that it was not the potentially lucrative bank holiday local derby match with Gloucestershire but the game with Northamptonshire at Glastonbury that he was allocated.[46] Gimblett made a century in that match and had, in terms of run aggregate, his best-ever season in 1952.[47] He scored 2134 runs in all matches, at an average of 39.51.[25] Against Derbyshire at Taunton, he became the first Somerset player to hit two centuries in a match twice, scoring 146 and 116 in a drawn game.[48]
If 1952 was a good season for Gimblett, then it was a poor one for his team. After several years in which the side had defied predictions and finished mid-table in the County Championship, Somerset fell to bottom place in 1952, and stayed there for four years. But Gimblett's own performance drew one of the game's accolades: in the 1953 edition of Wisden, he was named one of the Five Cricketers of the Year, alongside Tom Graveney, David Sheppard, Stuart Surridge and Fred Trueman.[49]
The 1953 season, with 19 Championship defeats, was even worse than 1952: Gimblett's own performance was maintained, though three matches missed through injury meant his aggregate fell a little, but he "seldom received adequate support from his colleagues", wrote Wisden.[50] The unbeaten 167 he made against Northamptonshire at Taunton was the 50th century of his first-class career.[51] At the end of the 1953 season he played festival cricket at Hastings and Kingston and Wisden's notes on Somerset in 1954 announced that he had "accepted a five-year contract to remain with the club".[50]
Health problems and later career
Throughout his life, Gimblett's personality was inclined to be morose and depressive, and there is evidence from across his cricket career of a gulf between his entertaining cricket style and his own personal negativism. Alan Gibson, the cricket writer who himself suffered from bouts of mental illness, wrote of him: "Most of those who watched him, or even met him, took him for a cheerful extrovert. This was wrong. He thought a lot, worried a lot, fretted a lot, all the more because he struggled to present a calm, bold front to the outer world."[52]
David Foot, the author of Gimblett's biography, wrote in his history of Somerset cricket that Gimblett "retained obsessive complexes about class, money and health".[53] In the biography, Foot writes of discovering the depth and the variety of Gimblett's different hatreds: "The hate – his uncompromising word – was spread over a wide area."[54] He appears to have found congeniality difficult and resentment easy, and there were periods of depressive illness. These culminated at the end of the 1953 cricket season in what appears to have been a full-scale breakdown.
Gimblett's own words, quoted in the Foot biography, tell the story. "I couldn't take much more. I was taking sleeping pills to make me sleep and others to wake me up. By the end of 1953 the world was closing in on me. I couldn't offer any reason why and I don't think the medical profession knew either."
Out of first-class cricket, Gimblett took a job as a cricket professional with Ebbw Vale Cricket Club in South Wales. He then applied for and got a job with his old Somerset captain,
At the time of his death, Gimblett had moved from Minehead to a mobile home at Verwood, Dorset. He died after taking an overdose of prescription drugs.[60] He was survived by his wife, Marguerita (Rita), whom he married in 1938, and by a son.
Notes
- ^ Foot, p. 1.
- ^ "Counties: Somerset". Barclays World of Cricket (1986 ed.). Book Club Associates. p. 448.
- ^ Foot, p. 41.
- ^ Foot, pp. 43–48.
- ^ Foot, pp. 53–54.
- ^ Foot, p. 53.
- ^ Foot, pp. 56–60.
- ^ Obituary, 1978. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (1979 ed.). Wisden. 8 February 2006. pp. 1077–1079. Retrieved 5 December 2014.
- ^ Foot, p. 60.
- ^ Foot, p. 62.
- ^ Foot, pp. 64–66.
- ^ Foot, pp. 66–68.
- ^ "Somerset v Essex". www.cricketarchive.com. 18 May 1935. Retrieved 17 September 2009.
- ^ Foot, p. 68.
- ^ "Somerset v Gloucestershire". www.cricketarchive.com. 29 June 1935. Retrieved 4 October 2009.
- ^ "Somerset Matches". Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. Vol. Part II (1936 ed.). Wisden. p. 374.
- ^ "Somerset v Indians". www.cricketarchive.com. 9 May 1936. Retrieved 8 October 2009.
- ^ "Lancashire v Somerset". www.cricketarchive.com. 16 May 1936. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ "Northamptonshire v Somerset". www.cricketarchive.com. 23 May 1936. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ "South v North". www.cricketarchive.com. 13 June 1936. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ "England v India". www.cricketarchive.com. 27 June 1936. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ "India in England". Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (1937 ed.). Wisden. p. 24.
- ^ "Gentlemen v Players". www.cricketarchive.com. 27 June 1936. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ "England v India". www.cricketarchive.com. 25 July 1936. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ a b c d e "First-class Batting and Fielding in Each Season by Harold Gimblett". www.cricketarchive.com. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ a b "Somerset Matches". Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (1937 ed.). Wisden. p. 224.
- ^ Foot, p. 82.
- ^ Foot, p. 83.
- ^ a b "Somerset in 1938". Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (1939 ed.). Wisden. p. 485.
- ^ "Somerset v Hampshire". www.cricketarchive.com. 21 July 1937. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ a b "Somerset in 1939". Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (1940 ed.). Wisden. p. 426.
- ^ "England v West Indies". www.cricketarchive.com. 24 June 1939. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ "West Indies in England in 1939". Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (1940 ed.). Wisden. p. 197.
- ^ "Gentlemen v Players". www.cricketarchive.com. 7 July 1939. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ Foot, pp. 94–97.
- ^ "Somerset v Middlesex". www.cricketarchive.com. 13 July 1946. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ "Somerset in 1946". Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (1947 ed.). Wisden. p. 404.
- ^ "Sussex v Somerset". www.cricketarchive.com. 18 August 1948. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ Foot, p. 102.
- ^ Foot, p. 103.
- ^ "Somerset v Hampshire". www.cricketarchive.com. 21 May 1949. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ "Somerset in 1949". Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (1950 ed.). Wisden. p. 476.
- ^ Foot, p. 104.
- ^ "Madhya Pradesh President's XI v Commonwealth XI v Hampshire". www.cricketarchive.com. 15 December 1950. Retrieved 9 October 2009.
- ^ Foot, p. 105.
- ^ Foot, p. 107.
- ^ "Somerset v Northamptonshire". www.cricketarchive.com. 26 July 1952. Retrieved 10 October 2009.
- ^ "Somerset v Derbyshire". www.cricketarchive.com. 12 July 1952. Retrieved 10 October 2009.
- ^ "Five Cricketers of the Year". Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (1953 ed.). Wisden. pp. 65–75.
- ^ a b "Somerset in 1953". Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (1954 ed.). Wisden. p. 518.
- ^ "Somerset v Northamptonshire". www.cricketarchive.com. 18 July 1953. Retrieved 10 October 2009.
- ISBN 0-04-796099-X.
- ISBN 0-7153-8890-8.
- ^ Foot, p. 121.
- ^ Quoted in Foot, pp. 108–109.
- ^ Foot, p. 109.
- ^ Foot, p. 110.
- ^ Quoted in Foot, p. 111.
- ^ a b Foot, pp. 112–119.
- ^ Foot, David (9 June 2003). "Tale of a tormented genius". CricInfo. Retrieved 10 September 2009.
Bibliography
- David Foot (1984). Harold Gimblett: Tormented Genius of Cricket (1984 ed.). Star (W. H. Allen). ISBN 0-352-31426-5.
External links
- Media related to Harold Gimblett at Wikimedia Commons
- Harold Gimblett at ESPNcricinfo