Robert Allan Fitzgerald

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Robert Allan Fitzgerald

Cricket information
Batting	Right-handed
Bowling	Right-arm fast
Career statistics
Competition First-class Matches 46 Runs scored 1,123 Batting average 15.59 100s/50s 0/5 Top score 91* Balls bowled 256 Wickets 7 Bowling average 28 5 wickets in innings 0 10 wickets in match 0 Best bowling 3/23 Catches/stumpings 34/0
Source: CricketArchive, 27 June 2020

Robert Allan "Fitz" Fitzgerald (1 October 1834 – 28 October 1881) was an English cricketer and administrator who served as Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) Secretary.

Fitzgerald was born at Purley House in

As a right-handed batsman and a round-arm right-arm fast bowler, he represented Cambridge University, MCC, Middlesex, in 46 first-class matches between 1854 and 1874. He also played for I Zingari, the Gentleman of MCC, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. Between 1854 and 1874 he played 50 matches per year and in 1866 scored over 1,000 runs.

Fitzgerald was popular and witty.

who had been proposed by Fitzgerald in 1867 as a member of MCC.

He succeeded

and its facilities. He became MCC's first paid secretary in 1865.

Fitzgerald was brother-in-law to his close friend

on regular tours to Ireland; to Paris in 1867 and around the country estates of England and Wales. Both enjoyed the pleasures of touring and entertaining their hosts in amateur dramatics. This is recorded in Fitzgerald's own cricketing scrapbook and also John Lorraine Baldwin's scrapbooks dating back to the origin of the I Zingari in 1845.

In 1876, Fitzgerald was asked to resign his post as MCC secretary due to deteriorating health. It has been speculated that he contracted neurosyphilis, which incidentally was the same illness that killed Lord Randolph Churchill. Fitzgerald died in 1881 at his home in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, at the age of 47.

A tangible memorial to him is on display at the MCC museum: his illustrated scrapbooks recording matches played between 1859 – 1866. The book contains the earliest cricketing photographs taken. Fitzgerald was also a keen amateur photographer.

Fitzgerald also wrote a humorous book titled Jerks in from Short Leg ¹published in 1865 and contributed to numerous cricketing publications including Bell's Life between 1859 – 1874. He also proof-read Arthur Haygarth's Score & Biographies which MCC supported during his time as secretary.

as President of MCC in 1887 paid homage to Fitzgerald. In his autobiography Bar, Bat and Bit, Leigh wrote: "It was, I think, a fortunate thing for the Club and for the cricketing world generally when he (Fitzgerald) became secretary, for a new era seems to have dawned at Lord's with his arrival, and all the vast improvements which took place there owed their origin, inception, and development to his fertile brain and his untiring energy".

References

External links

• Jerks in From Short-Leg- Google Books
• "Wickets in the West" - Internet Archive, University of Alberta Libraries
• Robert Allan Fitzgerald at Cricinfo
• Stoneleigh CC