Hector Cosmo Fisher (born 4 May 1901) was an English-Swiss-Thai

tennis Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...

player and

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby lea ...

Personal life

Fisher was born in

Myaungmya Myaungmya ( ) is the principal town of Myaungmya Township, Ayeyarwady Region, Myanmar. The town is home to the Myanmar Union Adventist Seminary, a Seventh-day Adventist seminary and Myaungmya Education College. As of 2014 the population was ...

Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...

in 1901 and baptised in Bassein,

Bengal Bengal ( ) is a Historical geography, historical geographical, ethnolinguistic and cultural term referring to a region in the Eastern South Asia, eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. The region of Benga ...

, British India in August 1902. He was the son of Henry Cosmo-Fisher (1874–1918) and Annie Fisher. His father was an Anglo-Indian born in Bangalore. He had a younger brother, Colin Cosmo-Fisher (1903–1964). He was described as a cosmopolitan "Burmese-Siamese-English-Swiss" athlete. Fisher attended

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

, and played tennis there before he moved to Switzerland.

Tennis

Fisher was above all an excellent tennis player. He represented Switzerland during his tennis career and played in the

Davis Cup The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men's tennis. It is organised by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and contested annually between teams from over 150 competing countries, making it the world's largest annual ...

in the years between 1931 and 1939. Fisher won the Swiss Open in

Gstaad Gstaad ( , ) is a town in the German language, German-speaking section of the Canton of Bern in southwestern Switzerland. It is part of the municipality of Saanen and is known as a major ski resort and a popular destination amongst high society ...

four times in 1923, 1928, 1929 and 1931. In 1925 he reached the quarter-finals of

Wimbledon Wimbledon most often refers to: * Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London * Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships Wimbledon may also refer to: Places London * W ...

. He won the international tennis tournament in

Wiesbaden Wiesbaden (; ) is the capital of the German state of Hesse, and the second-largest Hessian city after Frankfurt am Main. With around 283,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 24th-largest city. Wiesbaden form ...

in 1929 and an international tournament in

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

in 1930.

Football

Fisher was also a footballer and played for Montreux-Sports at least during the 1927–28 season. He also played for

FC Basel 1893 Fussball Club Basel 1893, widely known as FC Basel, FCB, or just Basel, is a Swiss professional football club based in Basel, in the Canton of Basel-Stadt. Formed in 1893, the club has been Swiss national champions 21 times, Swiss Cup winners 1 ...

in at least one league match in 1930. Fisher joined Basel's first team during their 1930–31 season under Austrian head coach Gustav Putzendopler. He played his first test game for them on 25 October 1930 at home in the

Landhof The Landhof was a sports stadium in the district Basel-Wettstein in Kleinbasel, Basel. It was the former and first home stadium of FC Basel. It is mentioned for the first time in a chronicle in the second half of the 18th century as a ''nice s ...

as Basel won 5–1 against

La Chaux-de-Fonds La Chaux-de-Fonds (; archaic ) is a Swiss city in the canton of Neuchâtel. It is located in the Jura Mountains at an altitude of 992 metres, a few kilometres south of the French border. After Geneva, Lausanne, Biel/Bienne, and Fribourg, ...

. After playing in another test game against Biel-Bienne, Fisher played his domestic league debut for the club in the away game on 30 November 1930 as Basel played a 2–2 draw with local team Old Boys. Fisher was only the second English person to play league football for the club, in fact to date he remains one of only three English players ever to play for Basel, the others being Archibald E. Gough between 1900 and 1902 and L. B. Trenchard Chaffey in 1901.

References

Sources

* Rotblau: Jahrbuch Saison 2017/2018. Publisher: FC Basel Marketing AG. * Die ersten 125 Jahre. Publisher: Josef Zindel im Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag, Basel.

External links

* * *
Hector Cosmo Fisher on "Basler Fussballarchiv" Website

Note

''(NB: The editors of these books and the authors in "Basler Fussballarchiv" have not been able to be able to identify all the players, their date and place of birth or date and place of death, who played in the games during the early years of FC Basel.)'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Fisher, Hector Swiss male tennis players 1901 births Year of death missing Alumni of the University of Oxford FC Basel players Men's association football players not categorized by position Swiss men's footballers 20th-century Swiss sportsmen