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Hampshire Cricket would like to express their great sadness at the passing of former batsman John Manners, aged 105
Hampshire Cricket would like to express their great sadness at the passing of former batsman John Manners, aged 105.
Manners, who became the oldest living first-class cricketer in 2018, was a skilled batsman and competent seam bowler.
The right-hander was an amateur after following a family tradition of education at Dartmouth and a career in the Royal Navy, but it was links with Portsmouth and his father residing in Alverstoke that helped to bring the Exeter-born youngster into the Hampshire side in the second half of August 1936, approaching his 22nd birthday.
He had played in some significant cricket before that including when just 15, a first appearance at Lord’s for CF Tuffnell’s XI v a Lord’s side, when he took 3-20 in an innings victory. While his first-class career was as a batsman, in his teens he showed as much promise as a bowler.
In May 1935 at Portsmouth, he scored 20 and took 4-43 for the United Services in a victory over a strong Hampshire Club & Ground XI, but the game that clinched John’s place in the Hampshire side was captaining the Royal Navy in a two-day match v the Army at Lord’s in July 1936.
He scored 23 & 47* and took the last wicket in a drawn game, and after his performance was watched by Colonel Heseltine, then Hampshire’s President and former player, he recommended Manners to his county.
He then made 81 on debut, just 19 runs away from being the only Hampshire player to score a century in their opening first-class appearance, and continued to total 212 first-class runs in his first fortnight at the club.
That haul was a promising start and The Cricketer described him as “a bold and aggressive batsman” with a bright future but sadly there would be no more county cricket in the next three seasons as Naval duty called.
When Manners first played for Hampshire he was serving on the Royal Yacht then in the late 1930s, he served variously in the Mediterranean, the Far East, the Caribbean and even Canada and Alaska – where “there was not much cricket”. Towards the end of the war, he took charge of HMS Viceroy, a Thornycroft W-Class destroyer, built at Woolston, engaging and sinking a German submarine off the north-east coast of England, and thereafter supporting the final stages of the conflict in the North Sea.
He remained in the Royal Navy after the war ended and played regularly for their side and the Combined Services, including in May 1947, a two-day match at Portsmouth alongside his brother, against a Hampshire side, much changed from that of 11 years previously.
Despite the end of his county career, John would play a further 12 matches designated as first-class between August 1948 and June 1953. He continued to play in non-first-class matches for the Free Foresters, the Forty Club and MCC and in the mid-1960s, and even in 1979 at the age of 63, appeared for Wiltshire Queries in a series of matches v Dorset Rangers.
Manners was awarded a major honour last November for his role as part of the Norway's Royal Navy during the Second World War. He was honoured for his role in the liberation of Norway in a special presentation made by the Norwegian military after serving as a Lieutenant Commander during the conflict.
