Moore Dick Image 1 Hampshire 1937

Description

Charminster, Dorset born right-handed batsman Dick Moore holds the record for the highest score by a Hampshire cricketer in a first class match. He had made his County Championship debut for Hampshire in August 1931 at the age of just 17 and went on to captain the County in 1936.

His record for Hampshire’s highest individual score, 316, was set at Dean Park, Bournemouth against Warwickshire in July 1937. The then 23-year-old Dick Moore hit three sixes and 43 fours in an innings that began with play at 11.30. Moore reached three figures before lunch and continued until almost 7 p.m. when he was last out and the big crowd reluctantly set about going home. Hampshire’s next highest score was 75 by Cecil Paris, with whom he added 207 for the fourth wicket in two hours. Moore was especially powerful in front of the wicket and not always discriminating when choosing the ball to hit, but his 316 contained remarkably few flaws. One skybound hit might have been caught by any one of three converging Warwickshire fielders but, to the crowd’s enjoyment, each left it to another.

Indeed Moore hit half of his ten centuries at Dean Park including his first, 159 against Essex in the last game of the 1933 season. Besides attaching strokes he also had an excellent defence and in 1934 he opened the innings, making 1,522 runs that season at 33.08, being rated by Wisden “probably the most promising young amateur in English cricket”. The next year, however, he went down with scarlet fever at the end of May and missed the rest of the season. When he returned in 1936 it was as County captain and, buoyed by his strong personality and enterprising approach, Hampshire rose six places to tenth, having for a time been a heady third. Moore himself had a poor mid-summer, scraping only 89 runs in his first 17 innings, but he came good again to reach his 1,000 runs, as he did once more in 1937, with 1,562 aggregate runs, and he made three centuries in 1938.

He was still only 26 when War broke out in 1939, Moore was in charge of a PoW camp in North Wales during the Second World War and remained there without resuming his cricket career after its end, and played for Denbighshire. In the 1950’s he organised a festival at Colwyn Bay that attracted some of the day’s leading cricketers.

in 137 first class games Moore scored 6,026 runs at an average of 26.08, with 19 half centuries in addition to his 10 hundreds, and, bowling medium pace or just below, took 25 wickets at 39.11 with a best return of 3-46.  He also held 116 catches in first class play.