Osmond Charles Ardagh (1 November 1900 – 1 February 1954) 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 a single match for

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 ...

in 1922. He was born at

Haslemere The town of Haslemere () and the villages of Shottermill and Grayswood are in south-west Surrey, England, around south-west of London. Together with the settlements of Hindhead and Beacon Hill (Hindhead, Surrey), Beacon Hill, they comprise ...

Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...

and was found drowned in the river

Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after th ...

at Wallingford, then in

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; abbreviated ), officially the Royal County of Berkshire, is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Oxfordshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the north-east, Greater London ...

Cricket career

In his single first-class cricket appearance, he opened the batting in the match against

Leicestershire Leicestershire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire to the north, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire to the south-east, Warw ...

and scored just two runs. He also played a few matches for

's second eleven in 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 ...

in 1920 and 1922.

Personal life

In 1925, when his forthcoming marriage to Margot Irene Biheller was announced in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'', he was credited as "of the Nyasaland Government Service". When she died in 1969, ''The Times'' recorded that they had had two sons, John and Hugh. His son John Ardagh was a noted journalist and writer on contemporary France. His grandson Arjuna Ardagh is a writer, and the founder of Awakening Coaching.

References

English cricketers Oxford University cricketers 1900 births 1954 deaths Alumni of Merton College, Oxford Deaths by drowning in the United Kingdom People from Haslemere Cricketers from Surrey 20th-century English sportsmen {{England-cricket-bio-1900s-stub