Jephson Digby Image 1 Cambridge University 1892

Description

Brixton, London born Digby Jephson was a right-handed middle order batsman and one of cricket’s last lob bowlers. He was educated at Manor House School in Clapham and at Peterhouse College, Cambridge Univer. Despite fairly modest achievements, in his three matches against Oxford he scored only 31 runs in three completed innings, Jephson won his Blue at Cambridge for three years from 1890 to 1892, and he played for Surrey regularly in 1894 having made his debut for the County in 1891, again without distinction. He barely played in 1895, and not at all in 1896, but from July 1897 he returned to regular county cricket with Surrey and appeared in most matches for the next five and half seasons. He scored more than 1,000 runs in the four seasons from 1898 to 1901, with a best of 1,952 runs, at an average of 41.53 in 1900, when he appeared in 38 first class matches.

His highest of the nine centuries he made for Surrey was 213 against Derbyshire at The Oval in 1900, when he and Bobby Abel (193), going in against a total of 325, made 364 together for the first wicket. In the match with Sussex at Hove a year later the same pair twice made over a hundred together for the opening partnership, 114 in the first innings and 109 in the second, Jephson’s scores being 95 and 85.

His lob bowling seemed to get more effective with the passing years, having originally started out as an overarm fast bowler. In 1899 he took 6-21 in The Gentlemen v The Players match at Lord’s which The Gentlemen won by an innings. In 1900 he took 66 wickets at 23.40 each and the following year he managed 77, including career best figures of 7-51 against Gloucestershire at The Oval. For Surrey he took 5-12 against Derbyshire at Chesterfield in 1899, and performed the hat-trick against Middlesex at The Oval in 1904.

Jephson captained Surrey from 1900 to 1902, but stood down before the end of the 1902 season, and thereafter appeared only a few times in first class cricket, playing his last match in 1904. In 207 first class matches he scored 7,973 at an average of 30.66, with 11 centuries and 40 half centuries. With his bowling he took 297 wickets at 25.10 apiece, with two ten wicket matches and 14 five wicket innings, also taking 104 catches in first class play.

Aside from his first class career, he was also a prolific batsman in London club cricket, in particular for the touring side Wanderers. For Crystal Palace v. Seaton in 1894 he and Stanley Colman made 300 together for the first wicket, and for Wanderers v. Tonbridge in 1900 the same pair put on 349 together, his own contribution on the latter occasion being 226. Other large innings played by him were 261 for Crystal Palace v. Eastbourne in 1893 and 301 not out, made in three and a quarter hours, for Wanderers against Norwood two years later, and twice his lobs accounted for all ten wickets in an innings – for Wanderers v. Chiswick Park in 1894 and for G. E. Bicknell’s Eleven v. Streatham in 1902.

He worked in the London Stock Exchange before becoming a journalist and a part-time cricket coach at Cambridge. He published A Few Overs, a book of 25 poems about cricket, with a foreword by C.B. Fry, in 1913.

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