Born On This Day: 3rd December

Guy Bignell was right-hand batsman and medium-pace bowler who was born in India in 1886.

He played for Hampshire across 21 years, but because he was a professional soldier, never regularly, appearing in just six seasons and a total of 55 matches. He occasionally played under a pseudonym, a practice fashionable among amateurs in the previous century, but in 1919 he was home from India on sick leave, and appeared in the Hampshire averages as G Newcombe (his middle name).

He played for notable club sides including MCC, Hampshire Hogs and Free Foresters, and for the county, scored 1,670 runs at an average of 20.61 and took 17 wickets. There was one century v Kent at Portsmouth in 1905, when he was still four months short of his 19th birthday – he remained Hampshire’s youngest centurion, until Liam Dawson in 2008.

He was a member of the Hampshire XI that beat the Australians in 1912. His older brother HG Bignell played five matches for Hampshire at the start of the century. Guy died in Switzerland in 1965.