FROM THE ARCHIVE: The XI, schoolboy prodigies

Short trousers, barely broken voices and spots. Richard Edwards on players who made a name for themselves while still at school...

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Short trousers, barely broken voices and spots. Richard Edwards on players who made a name for themselves while still at school...

1: Reece Topley

“It’s a bit frustrating. While I was sitting my business studies exam yesterday morning I must admit I did glance up at the clock around 11am and thought to myself, ‘Essex will be going out about now,’” said Topley after taking 14 wickets in three Championship matches for the county during his Easter break from the Royal Hospital School. Aged 17, Topley’s performances for Essex have put him on the back pages but not for the first time. As a 15-year-old he needed stitches under his ear after finding himself on the wrong end of a Kevin Pietersen straight drive in the nets at Loughborough.

2: Jack Russell

“So Russell can return to Stroud, with justifiable pride, and concentrate on stumping the A level examiners,” wrote Alan Gibson in The Times after the future England wicketkeeper had shone on his Gloucestershire debut against the touring Sri Lankans in June 1981, aged 17. The first of his 1,320 first-class victims was Anura Ranasinghe, pouched off the bowling of John Childs. He took a further six catches and a stumping in the match. “I’m sure he has a distinguished future if he cares about his game,” wrote Gibson.

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Topley attended Royal Hospital School in Suffolk

3: Peter Kirsten

By the time Kirsten made his debut for Western Province in 1973 he was already a legendary figure, having re-written the record books at the South African College School in Cape Town. Aged 18, he top-scored with 68 in the second innings of that match against Eastern Province and six months later would swap his bat for a rugby ball to play for Western Province in a warm-up match against the British Lions on their victorious 1974 tour.

4: Imran Khan

Imran was halfway through his A Levels when Pakistan bundled him on to a plane bound for the 1971 tour of England. He was at Lahore Cathedral School at the time and would finish his studies the following year at Worcester’s Royal Grammar School after being offered a contract at New Road. He had made his first-class debut for Lahore at 16 in September 1969 and in 1972 would leave his mark on Keble College, Oxford in more ways than one. “He had a reputation for sexual success that made us envious,” one of his contemporaries would later recall.

5: Jack Crawford

The bespectacled Crawford would become one of the finest allrounders of his era and he first made a name for himself while still in short trousers at Repton in 1904. At 17 he made his Surrey debut against Kent at Canterbury and took 10 for 78 in his sixth match against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham. A few months after leaving school he would be playing for England against South Africa in the opening Test of their 1905-06 tour.

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“I’m sure he has a distinguished future if he cares about his game”

6: Chris Cowdrey

“It has been annoying and all rather pointless,” said Chris Cowdrey when asked whether he had enjoyed being compared with his father Colin throughout his career. He had clearly not but after making his debut for Kent 2nd XI at 15 while still at Tonbridge - the same school as his father - it is little wonder that people expected him to follow in those famous footsteps. While his achievements were not as grand as his father’s, he did win six Test capts and even captained England during the ill-fated summer of 1988.

7: The Nawab of Pataudi

When the Nawab of Pataudi left Winchester College in the summer of 1959 he had lost only once in their colours since arriving five years earlier. “Under Pataudi's able captaincy Winchester lost their first match against another school since 1954 by one run off the last ball of the match against Harrow - scarcely a defeat in the broadest sense - and Pataudi’s total of 1,068 runs surpassed DR Jardine’s figure of 997 in 1919,” wrote The Times on the eve of the 1960 school season. 

8: John Barclay

Elvis Presley was top of the charts and a loaf of bread cost 9d when John Barclay, later Sussex captain, made his Championship debut in August 1970, aged 16. Barclay was enjoying his summer holidays from Eton at the time but did not have much chance to soak up the sun as Glamorgan won a rain-affected match in Swansea by nine wickets. He did not get much of an opportunity to stake his claim for a regular slot - remaining unused as a batsman and bowler. Barclay, then Eton captain, would have more luck at Lord’s in his final match against Harrow the following summer, scoring 66.

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“He had a reputation for sexual success that made us envious”

9: Charlie Townsend

Townsend was 16 and at Clifton College in Bristol when he became a Gloucestershire hero against Somerset at Cheltenham in 1893. On what Nasser Hussain would surely have referred to as a ‘raging Bunsen,’ the leg-spinner finished with the Somerset innings with a hat-trick, all three stumped by William Brain. He did not stop there either; two years later he finished the season with 131 wickets at a cost of 13 apiece.

10: Colin Bland

The man who would become synonymous with fielding excellence played his opening first-class match while still at Milton High School in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe (the Rhodesia). He had already represented Rhodesia schools at rugby, hockey and cricket and was waiting to take up a rugby scholarship at Stellenbosch University when, aged 18, he got the nod to play for Rhodesia against Peter may’s touring MCC side in November 1956. He top-scored in both innings in a crushing defeat and, after making his debut for South Africa against New Zealand five years later, averaged close to 50 in his 21 Tests.

11: Ross Gregory

Were it not for Gregory’s death in action during the Second World War aged 26, he would probably have joined the ranks of the post-war Australian greats. The fresh-faced batsman played for Victoria while still at Melbourne’s Wesley College in February 1934 shortly before his 18th birthday and made his Test debut against England three years later as Don Bradman’s side won at Adelaide. In the final match of the series - also won convincingly and in what turned out to be his final Test innings - Gregory hit 80 in front of his home crowd at the MCG.

This article first appeared in the June 2011 edition of The Cricketer

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