Reggie Ingle - Somerset Captain

Somerset Captain

At the end of the 1931 English cricket season, Jack White, Somerset captain since 1927, gave up the captaincy and Ingle was appointed for the 1932 season. He held the job for six seasons, and could be accounted relatively successful, since the side finished in the top half of the County Championship twice in this period, a feat not achieved in the preceding seven seasons.

For Ingle personally, the first season of captaincy, 1932, was the best. Wisden, in its review of the 1932 Somerset season for the 1933 annual, said he was to be "heartily congratulated" on the improvement in the side which had taken it from thirteenth to seventh place. It went on: "If taking some time really to find his form, he led the side with considerable ability and judgment and set his colleagues a creditable example in the matter of fielding. He put together three separate innings of over a hundred, increased his average by seven and finished with an aggregate of nearly a thousand." In fact, adding in his scores in one match for MCC, Ingle passed 1,000 runs for the second time in his career, and his season total of 1,083 runs at an average of 24.06 was his best in aggregate.

In fact, the following season, 1933, Ingle fared even better with the bat, though he missed out on 1,000 for the season by missing half a dozen games. His average of 29.74 for 922 runs in the season was his highest, and he scored two centuries. The team as a whole, however, fell from seventh to eleventh in the Championship.

Ingle's batting fell away rather badly after this high point. In the next three seasons, he struggled to average 15 runs an innings, though he made one further century in 1935. Wisden noted that Ingle had become "a member of a rather pronounced 'tail'."

Somerset returned to seventh place in the County Championship in 1936, but again it proved to be a temporary success. After the 1937 season, in which the county returned to the lower reaches of the championship table, Ingle stood down as captain, being replaced by his fellow Bath solicitor, Longrigg. He played a few matches for the county in both 1938 and 1939, but did not reappear in first-class cricket after the Second World War.