Lyon Beverley Image 1 Gloucestershire 1937

Caterham, Surrey born Beverley Lyon was a bespectacled middle-order batsman and a fine close to the wicket fielder, a specialist at short-leg or in the slips who had a reputation for taking many fine catches. Lyon held forthright and, for his time, outspoken views on cricket captaincy and cricket traditions and who was given full rein by his County, Gloucestershire, to express his views as captain for six years from 1929.

Some of Lyon’s views, on Sunday cricket and on a knockout cup, for instance, were by some distance too far ahead of their time. But in 1931, he was involved in a “rule-bending” match against Yorkshire at Sheffield in which, after two rain-ruined days, he and the Yorkshire captain agreed to declare their Counties’ first innings after one ball had been bowled to bring about a result on the second innings. The rules were changed for the following season to allow for a one innings match in similar circumstances.

Lyon brought Gloucestershire greater success than the County had seen since the days of W.G. Grace. In 1929 and 1930, they won more matches than any other County; in 1930 and 1931, they finished second. Lyon was aided, no doubt, by having Wally Hammond, perhaps England’s finest batsman of the time in the side. And the three years of success coincided as well with the last truly effective years of the great slow left-arm bowler Charlie Parker and the first effective years of Parker’s successor, the off break bowler Tom Goddard, whom Lyon had persuaded the County to re-engage in 1929. But the captaincy of Lyon was regarded as a vital factor, and he was chosen as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1931. The citation in Wisden suggested that he might be a future captain of England, but that did not happen.

Educated at Rugby he came under the eye of former England cricketer Willis Cuttel, then the coach there, and was in the school eleven in 1917 and 1918, heading the batting averages in the latter year with figures of 25.70 and a highest innings of 98 not out, before going up to Oxford University. Lyon’s Gloucestershire career began in 1921; he also won a Blue at Oxford University in 1922 and 1923.

He appeared for Gloucestershire with modest success in the 1920’s before he made his first century when he scored 131 against Surrey at The Oval in 1928. In the 1929 season Lyon, scoring over a thousand runs for the first time in his career, ranked, up to August, among the leading amateur batsmen of the season scoring 1,397 runs at an average of 33, making three centuries. In 1930 he made four hundreds, two of them in a match against Essex at Bristol, and, with an aggregate of 1,355 runs at an average of 41, wound up second in the County averages only to Hammond. He resigned from the Gloucestershire captaincy after three more moderate years from 1932 to 1934, but played intermittently until 1947. He had also played Minor Counties cricket for Wiltshire in 1920.

His brother Malcolm “Dar” Lyon played 267 matches for Cambridge University and Somerset between the wars and the brothers were on opposing sides in the 1922 Varsity match. In 1930, in the match between Somerset and Gloucestershire at Taunton, Dar scored 210 after being dropped twice by Goddard, but Bev replied with a century of his own and led his side to victory by eight wickets.

In 267 first class matches, Lyon scored 10,694 runs at an average of 24.98 with 16 centuries and 49 half centuries and a highest score of 189. With his bowling he took 52 wickets with a best performance of 5-72, his only five wicket innings. He also took 266 catches in his first class career.

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