William Farrimond (23 May 1903 – 15 November 1979) was an English

cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

er who played in four Test matches from 1931 to 1935. He was born and died at

Westhoughton Westhoughton ( ) is a List of towns in England, town and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester, England, southwest of Bolton, east of Wigan and northwest of Manchester.Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

. Bill Farrimond was widely regarded in the late 1920s and across the 1930s as the second-best

wicketkeeper In cricket, the wicket-keeper is the player on the fielding side who stands behind the wicket, ready to stop deliveries that pass the batsman, and take a catch, stump the batsman out, or run out a batsman when occasion arises. The wicket-ke ...

in English

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is of three or more days scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officially adju ...

, but the man regarded as the best was his

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

colleague George Duckworth – and for many years both of them were kept out of the England team by Leslie Ames, who was a much better batsman. The result was that Farrimond played only a handful of county matches each season from 1925 to 1937 before, on the retirement of Duckworth, he finally played two full seasons in 1938 and 1939. Despite being second-string wicketkeeper at Lancashire, Farrimond played four Tests. In 1930–31, he was picked as second wicketkeeper to Duckworth on the tour to the

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

, and played in two matches when Duckworth was injured. Four years later, he toured the

West Indies The West Indies is an island subregion of the Americas, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island country, island countries and 19 dependent territory, dependencies in thr ...

and played one Test, with regular keeper Les Ames playing just as a batsman in that match. His only home Test match was the game at

Lord's Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket List of Test cricket grounds, venue in St John's Wood, Westminster. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex C ...

in 1935 against South Africa, when Ames again played as a batsman only. An unobtrusive wicketkeeper, unlike Duckworth, Farrimond was the second wicketkeeper, after Tiger Smith, to make seven dismissals in an innings, then the world record. A useful lower-order batsman, his one century came playing for the

Minor Counties The National Counties, known as the Minor Counties before 2020, are the cricketing counties of England and Wales that do not have first-class status. The game is administered by the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), which comes unde ...

side. He played one first-class match in 1945, a friendly "Roses" match, but at 42 years of age, he did not play again when regular cricket resumed after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Farrimond, Bill 1903 births 1979 deaths England Test cricketers English cricketers Lancashire cricketers Sportspeople from Westhoughton Cricketers from Greater Manchester Minor Counties cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers English cricketers of 1919 to 1945 20th-century English sportsmen Sir L. Parkinson's XI cricketers Wicket-keepers Marylebone Cricket Club South African Touring Team cricketers