Nicolson John Image 1 Natal 1928

Description

Durban, Natal born John Nicolson was educated at Oxford University, where he played a lot of club cricket, but made only one first class appearance for the University, playing against The West Indies in 1923. A left-handed opening batsman, he became a fairly regular player for Natal for five years from 1923-24, described as “skilful and untiring in defence and could hit hard on the leg side”.

His best season was 1926-27, when he scored the only three centuries of his career. They included an unbeaten 252 against Orange Free State at Bloemfontein in which he shared a first wicket stand of 424 with Jack Siedle. Nicolson’s score was, at that time, the highest ever made in South Africa and the stand remains the South African record for the first wicket.

Nicolson was picked for the Third Test against Captain Stanyforth’s 1927-28 England touring team, making his South Africa debut at Durban in January 1928. He made 78 in the second innings, which was his highest Test score. He retained his place in the two remaining matches of the series, and although he made starts in his other Test innings, demonstrated by his Test match average of 35.80, he didn’t make a further half century. But he was less successful in domestic South African cricket in the following season, and was not picked for the tour of England in 1929.

Nicolson retired from cricket after a couple of matches in 1929-30, and in total he played 28 first class matches he scored 1,543 runs at an average of 37.63 with 7 half centuries in addition to his 3 hundreds, he also took 3 wickets with his occasional bowling with a best performance of 2-36. He was a schoolmaster in Ireland when he passed away in December 1935 aged only 36.

Vintage Cricketers was founded in July 2019. There may be more photographs of this cricketer in the Vintage Cricketers library, which are due to be loaded in due course. In the meantime, please send a message to us using the contact form at the bottom left of this page and we can arrange to prepare and publish all images of this cricketer if you have a particular interest in him.