Horace Venn (4 July 1892 – 23 November 1953) was an English

cricketer Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

who played

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between 1919 and 1925 for

Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avo ...

. He was born and died at

Coventry Coventry ( or ) is a city in the West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its city status until the Middle Ages. The city is governed b ...

, now in West Midlands but formerly in

. Venn was prominent as a right-handed batsman in Coventry district club cricket before the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, playing for the Foleshill Victoria club, and also appeared in second eleven matches for Warwickshire. He did not at this stage play first-class cricket, but in 1919, he turned out for a "full" Warwickshire side – composed mainly of

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– in a first-class non-

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game against

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...

and, opening the batting, scored 151. In the return match a few weeks later, his 58 in his only innings was the top score of the game. That appears to have encouraged Venn to give a whole season to first-class cricket and he was a regular opening batsman for the first three months of the 1920 season. Initially, he was quite successful, and against

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he made 115 out of Warwickshire's total of 233, his second and final first-class century. ''

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', or simply ''Wisden'', colloquially the Bible of Cricket, is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. The description "bible of cricket" was first used in the 1930s by Alec Waugh in a ...

'' noted: "Strong in defence with a stiff fore-arm forcing stroke, Venn got most of his runs in front of the wicket. He played-on after two and a half hours' batting, having scored 115 out of 222." Venn did not pass 50 in any other innings that season, and his record for the season as a whole was modest, with 591 runs at an average of 16.41 runs per innings. Venn returned to Warwickshire for a few early matches in the 1921 season, but was not successful; he then played three times in 1922 and once in 1925, again without making much impact.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Venn, Horace 1892 births 1953 deaths English cricketers Warwickshire cricketers