Ken Cranston

Ken Cranston
Personal information
Full name	Kenneth Cranston
Born	20 October 1917; Liverpool, Lancashire, England
Died	8 January 2007 (aged 89); Southport, Lancashire, England
Batting	Right-handed
Bowling	Right-arm medium
International information
National side	England;
Career statistics
	Source: [1]

Kenneth Cranston (20 October 1917

England

, in 1947 and 1948. He retired from playing cricket to concentrate on his career as a dentist.

Life and career

Early life

Cranston was born in

Combined Services, and played club cricket in Lancashire after the war. He also played hockey

for the county.

Cricket career

Cranston was appointed

Oxford University. He was immediately successful in first-class cricket, and made his Test cricket debut in the Third Test against South Africa at Old Trafford on 5 July, less than eight weeks after his first-class debut. In the Fourth Test at Headingley

, he took four wickets in six balls (w.w.ww) to end the South African second innings.

He was selected as vice-captain of the relatively weak

Invincibles, in which the tourists scored 404 on the final day to win the match.^[1]

Cranston led Lancashire to third place in the County Championship in 1947, with the team losing only one match. The team was fifth in 1948. Cranston himself scored over 1,000 runs in each year, and took 84 and then 79 wickets. He also played in two Gentlemen v Players matches in 1947, at Lord's and Scarborough, and again at Lord's in 1948. He resigned as captain of Lancashire at the end of his second season to concentrate on his dental practice in Liverpool.^[1] He played for the North of England against the South in 1947, 1949 and 1950, and played his last first-class match in 1950.

Later life

Cranston practised as a dentist in Aigburth until 1990. He was president of Lancashire County Cricket Club in 1993–94, and was a president of the Lancashire Former Players' Association.

He married twice. He first married Mary Joyce Harrison in 1942. They had a daughter and a son, but were divorced in 1964. He married Joanne Legg later that year; they had a son.

He became the oldest living former English Test cricketer on 28 December 2006, on the death of Norman 'Mandy' Mitchell-Innes. Following his own death eleven days later in Southport, that distinction passed to Arthur McIntyre.

References

^
ISBN 1-869833-21-X
.

Ken Cranston at ESPNcricinfo
England's oldest surviving Test cricketer dies,
Cricinfo
, 9 January 2007
Obituary^{[dead link]}, The Daily Telegraph, 10 January 2007
Obituary, The Independent, 23 January 2007
Obituary, The Times, 27 January 2007
Obituary, The Guardian, 13 March 2007

[Cap-1] 
ISBN 1-869833-21-X
.

[1]