Bardswell Gerald Image 3 Lancashire 1896

Description

Woolton, Liverpool born Gerald Bardswell was a right-handed batsman sometimes used as an opener and a right-arm medium pace bowler. He was educated at Uppingham School where he was played mainly as a medium pace bowler, and at Oriel College, Oxford. It was as a bowler that made his first class debut for Oxford University on 21st May 1894. In his third game he took six Lancashire wickets for 36 runs in the County side’s only innings of the match. His nine wickets in the next Oxford game, against Marylebone Cricket Club (M.C.C.), included several Test match players.

He was picked for the University match against Cambridge and took 6-76 in Cambridge’s second innings to help Oxford to an eight wicket victory. It was said of his bowling “Very tall, his slow round-arm bowling, on which there is at times a lot of spin, is often very effective” and he was described as “one of it’s [Oxford’s] best all round players”. After nine matches for Oxford, he had taken 40 wickets at an average of just over 16 runs per wicket. He then played in a few matches for Lancashire when the university season was over, taking five catches in one match and four in another: Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack wrote later that “among the short slips of his day no one surpassed him”.

At the end of the 1894 English season, and before the University term began, Bardswell joined a team raised by Lord Hawke which toured North America and played two first class matches. In the 1895 season he was in the Oxford University first team from the outset, and in the first game he opened the innings with Pelham Warner, scoring 69, more than double his previous highest first class score of 32. His season was curtailed, however, by a hand injury after just four matches, during which he had taken 11 wickets and 12 catches, and he did not play again that summer.

Bardswell returned to the Oxford team for the 1896 season but after his hand injury he scarcely bowled at all: he took just two wickets in 1896 and another two in 1897, and did not bowl at all after that. Instead, he won a second Blue for his much improved batting, mostly from the lower middle order, though he occasionally acted as an opening batsman; in the match against Surrey at The Oval he hit 97 and this was to be the highest score of his first class career. Having been instrumental in the victory in his previous University Match in 1894 with his bowling, he was at the wicket batting when Oxford secured a dramatic victory by four wickets in the 1896 game against Cambridge. Later in the season he again played for Lancashire; in his 16 first class matches in 1896, he averaged 27.80 with the bat and took 32 catches.

For the 1897 season, Bardswell was elected as captain of the Oxford University team. In the early part of the year, however, though notionally at Oxford, he took part in a three month tour of the West Indies, again under the captaincy of Lord Hawke. He played in six first class matches on the tour and scored well, taking in addition 18 catches. His captaincy at Oxford was not successful: the team was notably weaker than in his previous years and the University match was won decisively by Cambridge, though Bardswell top scored in both Oxford innings.

In 1898, Bardswell played only in a couple of first class matches for M.C.C. against the Combined Universities, but at the start of the 1899 season he reappeared for Lancashire, playing as captain in the first six games of the season, but standing aside when Archie MacLaren resumed his cricket career in June. That was the end of Bardswell’s first class cricket career apart from one appearance for Lancashire in an end-of-season match in 1902, in which he was not at all successful.

In 59 first class matches, Bardswell scored 1,585 runs at an average of 20.06, scoring 9 half centuries. With a best bowling of 6-36 he took 63 wickets at an average of 25.68 a piece, with 4 five wicket innings. He also took 104 catches in first class cricket.

At the time of his death aged 33 in December 1906, Bardswell was a committee member of M.C.C.; he had had an operation earlier in the year, but his death in New Orleans was described as happening “very suddenly”.