George Pope

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George Pope
England (ENG)
George Pope
Batting style Right-hand bat
Bowling type Right-arm fast-medium
Tests First-class
Matches 1 205
Runs scored 8 7518
Batting average - 28.05
100s/50s -/- 8/43
Top score 8* 207*
Balls bowled 218 30781
Wickets 1 677
Bowling average 85.00 19.92
5 wickets in innings - 40
10 wickets in match - 7
Best bowling 1/49 8/38
Catches/stumpings -/- 157/-

Test debut: 21 June 1947
Last Test: 21 June 1947
Source: [1]

George Henry Pope (born January 27, 1911, Tibshelf, Derbyshire, died October 29, 1993, Spital, Derbyshire) was an English cricketer who played in one Test in 1947.

A combative lower middle-order right-handed batsman and a right-arm fast-medium bowler, George Pope followed his older brother Alf Pope into the Derbyshire side in the mid-1930s, and had just established himself in a competitive side when a cartliage injury early in 1936 caused him to missed all but a handful of matches in the county's sole County Championship-winning side. He returned in 1937 and scored more than 1,000 runs with 92 wickets, and toured India with Lord Tennyson's XI in 1937-38.

He was Derbyshire's leading all-rounder in both 1938 and 1939, achieving the all-rounder's "double" of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in 1938. He played League cricket in 1946, the first season after the Second World War, but returned to Derbyshire for 1947, when he took 114 wickets. He was back again in 1948, when he completed the second "double" of his career and made his highest score, an unbeaten 207 against Hampshire at Portsmouth, sharing an unbroken seventh wicket stand of 241 with Albert Rhodes that remained the county's record until 2000.

Pope's Test career had two false starts. In 1938 he was picked in the party for the Trent Bridge match against Australia and then discarded from the final eleven. He was then chosen for the 1939-40 tour to India that was cancelled because of the outbreak of war. Finally, he played in the Lord's Test of 1947 against South Africa, but took only one tail-end wicket and was dropped.

At the end of the 1948 season, Pope announced his immediate retirement to move to the Channel Islands to look after his wife, who was ill. He returned to first-class cricket on the Commonwealth XI tour of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 1949-50, but at the end of that he retired for good. From 1966 to 1974 he stood as a first-class umpire in English county matches, returning for one last match as umpire in 1976.