George Cyril Perkins (4 June 1911 – 21 November 2013) was an English

cricket 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 st ...

er. Perkins was a right-handed

batsman In cricket, batting is the act or skill of hitting the ball with a bat to score runs and prevent the loss of one's wicket. Any player who is currently batting is, since September 2021, officially referred to as a batter (historically, th ...

who bowled both

slow left-arm orthodox Left-arm orthodox spin, Left-arm off spin also known as slow left-arm orthodox spin bowling, is a type of left-arm finger spin bowling in the sport of cricket. Left-arm orthodox spin is bowled by a left-arm bowler using the fingers to spin ...

and left-arm medium pace. He was born in Wollaston, Northamptonshire. On 4 June 2011 he became the 13th former first-class player to reach 100 years of age, and the fourth county cricketer to do so. Following the death of Syd Ward in January 2010, Perkins held the distinction of being the oldest living first-class cricketer.

Career

Perkins made his first-class debut for

Northamptonshire County Cricket Club Northamptonshire County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Northamptonshire. Its limited overs team is called the Northa ...

against

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a historic county in southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in neighbourin ...

in the

County Championship The County Championship (referred to as the LV= Insurance County Championship for sponsorship reasons) is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales and is organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). It b ...

. He played for Northamptonshire from 1934 to 1937, a period notable in Northamptonshire's history for their astonishing winless run: the county failed to register a win in 99 first-class matches between 1935 and 1939. Perkins' made 56 first-class appearances for Northamptonshire, without ever being on the winning side. Perkins performed well with the ball during his first-class career with the county, taking 93 wickets at an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

of 35.58, claiming a

five wicket haul In cricket, a five-wicket haul (also known as a "five–for" or "fifer") occurs when a bowler takes five or more wickets in a single innings. This is regarded by critics as a notable achievement, equivalent to a century from a batsman. Takin ...

on 5 occasions, and taking best figures of 6/54. His best figures came 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 ...

in 1935, a season which was by far and away his best season with the ball, with Perkins taking 63 wickets at 26.46 a piece. As a tailender, Perkins scored 560 runs with the bat, coming at a

batting average Batting average is a statistic in cricket, baseball, and softball that measures the performance of batters. The development of the baseball statistic was influenced by the cricket statistic. Cricket In cricket, a player's batting average i ...

of 7.88, with a high score of 29. A handy fielder, he took 30 catches in the field. Perkins left Northamptonshire at the end of the end of the 1937 season, having played his final match against

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a Historic counties of England, historic county, Ceremonial County, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significa ...

Old Trafford Old Trafford () is a football stadium in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, and the home of Manchester United. With a capacity of 74,310 it is the largest club football stadium (and second-largest football stadium overall after We ...

. Moving to

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line r ...

, he joined

minor county 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 ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include L ...

in 1939, making his debut for the county in the

Minor Counties Championship The NCCA 3 Day Championship (previously the Minor Counties Cricket Championship) is a season-long competition in England and Wales that is contested by the members of the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), the so-called national cou ...

against

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershir ...

. He played throughout 1939, before the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

ended county cricket until 1946. During the war, he served with the

Royal Artillery The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises t ...

, spending time at the end of the war in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo met ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Med ...

. Perkins returned to playing minor counties cricket for Suffolk following the war, which he had to balance with his work commitments as cricket coach at

Ipswich School Ipswich School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school) for pupils aged 3 to 18 in Ipswich, Suffolk, England. North of the town centre, Ipswich School has four parts on three adjacent sites. The Pre-Prep and Nurser ...

. In 1951 he made his final first-class appearance, which came for the

Minor Counties cricket team 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 ...

against

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

. In his final first-class match, he scored 8 runs in the Minor Counties first-innings and an unbeaten 21 in their second-innings. However, he went wicket-less with the ball and Kent won by an innings. This meant he went winless in his 57 first-class appearances, a record for the number of first-class appearances without featuring in a win. Perkins continued to play for Suffolk in the Minor Counties Championship until 1967, having by then made 105 appearances for the county. By the time of his retirement at the age of 56, he had claimed a record 779 wickets for the county, some way ahead of

Colin Rutterford Colin Rutterford (born 1 August 1943) is a former English cricketer. Rutterford was a right-handed batsman who bowled right-arm fast-medium. He was born in Lakenheath, Suffolk. Rutterford made his debut for Suffolk in the 1965 Minor Countie ...

's 431. Such was Perkins' accuracy as a bowler, ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' reporter Simon Parry-Crooke described watching him bowl as: "he had this incredible control: he could just drop the ball on a handkerchief." Indeed, he once took 10 wickets in an innings, when playing against Hertfordshire in 1960. He still had the match ball when he celebrated his 100th birthday. Perkins also made a solitary

List A List A cricket is a classification of the limited-overs (one-day) form of the sport of cricket, with games lasting up to eight hours. List A cricket includes One Day International (ODI) matches and various domestic competitions in which the numbe ...

appearance for Suffolk at the age of 55 in the 1966 Gillette Cup against a powerful Kent side at

. He bowled 12 wicket-less

overs Over may refer to: Places *Over, Cambridgeshire, England *Over, Cheshire, England *Over, South Gloucestershire, England *Over, Tewkesbury, near Gloucester, England **Over Bridge *Over, Seevetal, Germany Music Albums * ''Over'' (album), by Pete ...

for the cost of 31 runs, while he wasn't required to bat in the Suffolk innings as Kent ran out winners by 113 runs.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Perkins, Cyril 1911 births 2013 deaths People from Wollaston, Northamptonshire English cricketers Northamptonshire cricketers Suffolk cricketers British Army personnel of World War II Royal Artillery soldiers Minor Counties cricketers English cricket coaches English centenarians Men centenarians

Career

See also

References

External links