Major Reginald Oscar Schwarz (4 May 1875 – 18 November 1918), known as Reggie Schwarz, was a South African international

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 and

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a Contact sport#Terminology, close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the Comparison of rugby league and rugby union, two codes of ru ...

footballer.

Early life

Schwarz was born in

Lee Lee may refer to: Name Given name * Lee (given name), a given name in English Surname * Chinese surnames romanized as Li or Lee: ** Li (surname 李) or Lee (Hanzi ), a common Chinese surname ** Li (surname 利) or Lee (Hanzi ), a Chinese ...

in London in 1875, the son of Robert George Schwarz, a merchant from Breslau who lived in

Bagshot Bagshot is a town in the Surrey Heath borough of Surrey, England, approximately southwest of central London. In the past, Bagshot served as an important staging post between London, Southampton Southampton () is a port City status in th ...

in Surrey. Schwarz was educated at St Paul's School in London, and matriculated to

Christ's College, Cambridge Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college includes the Master, the Fellows of the College, and about 450 undergraduate and 170 graduate students. The college was founded by William Byngham in 1437 as ...

in 1893. While at Cambridge he joined the Cambridge University rugby team and in

the Varsity Match The Varsity Match is an annual rugby union fixture played between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England. The event began in 1872 with the first men's match, with interruptions only for the two World Wars. Since 1921, the game has ...

of 1893 he won his only sporting

Blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when ...

. Although Schwarz became better known as a cricketer than a rugby player, he did not win a Blue for cricket.

Rugby career

Schwarz won three caps for

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

against Scotland in

1899 Events January 1899 * January 1 ** Spanish rule ends in Cuba, concluding 400 years of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. ** Queens and Staten Island become administratively part of New York City. * January 2 – **Bolivia sets up a c ...

, and Wales and Ireland in 1901. At club level, Schwarz played for Richmond and in the 1896–97 season was invited to play for the Barbarians.

Cricket career

Schwarz played a handful of games for

Middlesex County Cricket Club Middlesex 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 Middlesex which has effectively been subsumed within the ceremonial ...

in 1901 and 1902 before emigrating to South Africa where he played for Transvaal. It was on his return to England with the

South African cricket team The South Africa national cricket team, also known as the Proteas, represents South Africa in men's international cricket and is administered by Cricket South Africa (CSA). South Africa is a full member of the International Cricket Council ( ...

in 1904 that he made his mark, having learned from Bernard Bosanquet how to bowl the

googly In the game of cricket, a googly refers to a type of delivery bowled by a right-arm leg spin bowler. It is different from the normal delivery for a leg-spin bowler in that it is turning the other way. The googly is ''not'' a variation of the ...

. Unusually, he bowled it as his stock delivery, with considerable success: in 1904 and 1907 he topped the

bowling average In cricket, a player's bowling average is the number of runs they have conceded per wicket taken. The lower the bowling average is, the better the bowler is performing. It is one of a number of statistics used to compare bowlers, commonly use ...

s, in the latter year taking 137 wickets at just 11.70 apiece, and he was named as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1908. On that 1907 tour, the first on which South Africa played Tests in England, they had no fewer than four leg-break and googly bowlers, Schwarz having passed on the secret of the googly to

Aubrey Faulkner George Aubrey Faulkner (17 December 1881 – 10 September 1930) was a South African cricketer who played 25 Test matches for South Africa and fought in both the Second Boer War and World War I. In cricket, he was an all-rounder who was among ...

, Bert Vogler and Gordon White. Schwarz retired from playing regularly after the 1912 season, although he appeared three times for L Robinson's XI over the next two seasons. In all he took 398 wickets at a

of 17.58, and in Tests he took 55 wickets at 22.60. Schwarz made one first class century: 102 runs scored in a non-Test game against an England XI at Lord's in 1904.

Personal and military career

Schwarz was a member of the London stock exchange from 1899 to 1902, before joining South African Railways in 1902 after his move to South Africa. From 1904 to 1911, he was a Member of the South African stock exchange until he rejoined the London stock exchange on his return to Britain. Schwarz was a Major in the

King's Royal Rifle Corps The King's Royal Rifle Corps was an infantry rifle regiment of the British Army that was originally raised in British North America as the Royal American Regiment during the phase of the Seven Years' War in North America known in the United S ...

of the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gur ...

and fought on the

Western Front Western Front or West Front may refer to: Military frontiers *Western Front (World War I), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (World War II), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (Russian Empire), a majo ...

in World War I. He was given the role of Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General and was Assistant Controller of Salvage. For his actions during the war he was

Mentioned in Despatches To be mentioned in dispatches (or despatches, MiD) describes a member of the armed forces whose name appears in an official report written by a superior officer and sent to the high command, in which their gallant or meritorious action in the face ...

and was awarded the

Military Cross The Military Cross (MC) is the third-level (second-level pre-1993) military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and formerly awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries. The MC i ...

. He survived the war, but died in the

Spanish flu The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case wa ...

epidemic at Étaples in northern France just seven days after the

Armistice An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace. It is derived from the ...

had been signed. He was 43.

References

External links