Joe Blackledge (1928 – 19 March 2008) was a first class cricketer who played for Lancashire County Cricket Club . He played for just one season - 1962 - captaining the team as an amateur in the year before the players and gentlemen distinction was formally abolished.
A fine all-round sportsman at Repton, he joined the Army and played much cricket for it in Germany. On leaving the Army, he was a successful batsman for Chorley in the Northern League and captained Lancashire's second XI.
The team he led in 1962 was one of the weakest in the club's long history and finished second from bottom in the table, losing 16 matches and winning only two. Blackledge hit 33 and 68 in the first match against Glamorgan, but contributed little with the bat thereafter, finishing with 548 runs at 15.65 in the Championship. He returned to running a textile business at the end of the season.
He later served on the Lancashire committee for many years and was President of the club in 2001.
He was the uncle of the former England rugby union captain Bill Beaumont.
Famous quotes containing the word joe:
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)