Early Career
His debut in first-class cricket was sensational. Picked for Nottinghamshire to play against MCC in one of the set-piece season-openers at Lord's in 1914, he took eight wickets for 91 runs in the first innings. He followed that with five for 58 in his first County Championship match. And by the end of his first season he had amassed 115 first-class wickets at an average of 21.80, including 10 instances of five wickets or more in an innings and three of 10 or more in a match. Against Leicestershire at Trent Bridge late in the season, he took eight for 75 in an innings, improving on his debut figures.
Barratt then lost the next four years of his cricket career to the First World War and when it resumed in 1919, according to his obituary in Wisden, "he was slow in finding his old form". He took 58 wickets in the limited 1919 fixtures, 68 in 1920 and 91 in 1921. Though his batting average across these seasons and beyond was low – he managed 16 runs per innings in 1919, but did not approach that again until the late 1920s – there were individual innings of power and brilliance. Against Sussex in 1919, he made 82 while batting at No 9, with his partners in ninth and tenth wicket partnerships contributing only 11 out of 60 runs. And in 1921 against Hampshire, he made 79 out of a partnership of 129 in 50 minutes for the eighth wicket with Dodger Whysall that led Nottinghamshire to an unlikely victory after they had fallen to 65 for six in search of 286 to win.
Read more about this topic: Fred Barratt
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
““next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims” and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn’s early my
country ‘tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jing by gee by gosh by gum”
—E.E. (Edward Estlin)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)