Norman Frederick Horner (10 May 1926 – 24 December 2003) was an 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 ...

er, who played two games for

Yorkshire County Cricket Club Yorkshire County Cricket Club is a professional Cricket club based in Yorkshire, England. The team competes in the County Championship, the top tier of English First-class cricket. Nicknamed "Vikings". Yorkshire also competes in T20 Blast, O ...

in 1950, before moving to

Warwickshire County Cricket Club Warwickshire County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class cricket, first-class county cricket, county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the Historic counties of England, historic county of ...

in 1951. A right-handed batsman, he made 18,533 runs at 29.79 in his 362-game career. Born in

Queensbury, West Yorkshire Queensbury is a village in the metropolitan borough and city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Perched on a high vantage point above Halifax, Clayton and Thornton and overlooking Bradford, Queensbury is one of the highest parishes in En ...

, Horner was a neat, dapper batsman, who formed a powerful opening partnership with Fred Gardner, and scored a thousand runs in every season up to 1964.

M.J.K. Smith Michael John Knight Smith , better known as M. J. K. Smith or Mike Smith, (born 30 June 1933) is an English double international, in cricket and in rugby union. He was captain of Oxford University Cricket Club (1956), Warwickshire ...

commented that "Norman would have run Fred's legs off him if he had been allowed". He went down the order in 1958, when the

Marylebone Cricket Club The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's, Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London, England. The club was the governing body of cricket from 1788 to 1989 and retain ...

(MCC) asked Warwickshire to promote Smith to develop him for a possible England opening spot. Horner scored quickly, and enjoyed his best three seasons from 1959 to 1961. On a flat

Oval An oval () is a closed curve in a plane which resembles the outline of an egg. The term is not very specific, but in some areas of mathematics (projective geometry, technical drawing, etc.), it is given a more precise definition, which may inc ...

pitch in 1960 he scored a career-best 203 not out, and put on 377 with Billy Ibadulla for the first wicket on the first day, then the highest unbroken opening partnership in cricket history. He was quick in the covers and took 131 catches. He retired in 1965 to concentrate on landscape gardening and his work as a cricket

groundsman Groundskeeping is the activity of tending an area of land for aesthetic or functional purposes, typically in an institutional setting. It includes mowing grass, trimming hedges, pulling weeds, planting flowers, etc. The U.S. Department of Labor e ...

. Horner died in

Driffield Driffield, also known as Great Driffield (neighbouring Little Driffield), is a market town and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The civil parish is formed by the town of Driffield and the village of Little Driffield. By ...

, Yorkshire in December 2003, at the age of 77.

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* 1926 births 2003 deaths English cricketers Warwickshire cricketers Yorkshire cricketers English cricket coaches People from Queensbury, West Yorkshire Sportspeople from the City of Bradford Players cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers T. N. Pearce's XI cricketers Cricketers from West Yorkshire 20th-century English sportsmen {{england-cricket-bio-1920s-stub