Billy Bates
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- For the American baseball player use Billy Bates (baseball player)
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| Batting style | Right-handed batsman | |
| Bowling type | Right-arm round-arm off-break | |
| Tests | First-class | |
| Matches | 15 | 299 |
| Runs scored | 656 | 10,249 |
| Batting average | 27.33 | 21.57 |
| 100s/50s | 0/5 | 10/47 |
| Top score | 64 | 144* |
| Balls bowled | 2,364 | 61,033 |
| Wickets | 50 | 874 |
| Bowling average | 16.42 | 17.13 |
| 5 wickets in innings | 4 | 52 |
| 10 wickets in match | 1 | 10 |
| Best bowling | 7-28 | 8-21 |
| Catches/stumpings | 9/0 | 238/0 |
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Test debut: 31 December 1881 |
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Willie Bates, known as Billy (19 November 1855 - 8 January 1900) was an English all-round cricketer. Excellent with both bat and ball, Bates scored over 10,000 first-class runs and also took more than 870 wickets -- although he was always reliable in the field. A snappy dresser, Bates was also known as "The Duke". He was somewhat uneducated, however, and his illiteracy comes through strongly in his letters.
Born to a humble family in Lascelles Hall, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, Bates became a professional cricket for Rochdale in 1873; four years later he made his first-class debut for Yorkshire, taking 4-69 in Middlesex's first innings to begin a ten-year career in the first-class game. He played 15 Test matches for England between 1881/82 and 1886/87, all of them in Australia.
At Melbourne in 1882/83, Bates played a starring role. He scored 55 in England's only innings before taking 7-28 (including a hat-trick for England) to force Australia to follow on, and then claimed 7-74 in the second innings to help his team to the first innings victory in a Test match. Bates also set several individual Test match records in this game: his hat-trick was the first for England, 7-28 was a world record innings return, no Englishman had previously taken 14 wickets in a game, and no player from any country had previously taken ten or more wickets and scored a half-century in the same match.
In domestic cricket Bates topped 100 first-class wickets only once, in 1881 when he took 121, but he passed 80 on another four occasions. His best bowling of 8-21 came in 1879, for Yorkshire against Surrey at The Oval. As a batsman he passed 1,000 runs in five seasons, scoring ten centuries including three in 1884. He made his highest first-class score of 144 not out in 1882 for Under 30 v Over 30 at Lord's, when he also recorded a miserly second-innings analysis of 22-15-17-3.
The end of Bates' career came suddenly. On the a non-Test tour of Australia with GF Vernon's XI in 1887/88, he was bowling in the nets when he was hit in the eye by a ball hit by a team-mate, and his eyesight was sufficiently impaired that he never again played first-class cricket, though he did appear in club cricket in the early 1890s, and was able to coach.
His inability to play the first-class game again caused him great unhappiness. He attempted suicide on the voyage home from Australia. At the end of December 1899 he caught a cold whilst attending the funeral of fellow Yorkshire player John Thewlis. His condition quickly worsened, and a few days later he died in Huddersfield, aged just 44.
His son William Bates had a long first-class career for Yorkshire and Glamorgan.
