Horace Fisher
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Horace Fisher was a first class cricketer who played 52 games for Yorkshire County Cricket Club between 1928 and 1936.
A slow let arm bowler from Flockton Colliery, he briefly challenged the great Hedley Verity for Wilfred Rhodes's vacated berth but was soon overshadowed and played only when Verity was on Test duty. He was a fine performer in his own right however, taking 93 wickets at 28.18 and keeping a tight rein on the opposing batsmen at all times. He was a useful batsman in the lower order too, scoring 681 runs at an average of 15.47. He was awarded his coveted Yorkshire Cap in 1935. Having left the mines to take up cricket, he vowed that he would never go down again.
A defensively minded bowler, who built up pressure by bowling maiden overs rather than generating sharp spin or generous flight, his game was honed in the gritty northern leagues where runs were at a premium. He would have thrived perhaps in the modern one day game, as 'flat' Jack Simmons did for Lancashire.
He is notable as the first bowler to claim a hat trick of LBW victims, in the course of taking 5 for 12 against Somerset CCC at Sheffield in August 1932, and to feature in one of the best known stories of the first class game. Umpire Alex Skelding, after dispatching Mandy Mitchell-Innes LBW for 5 and then Bill Andrews first ball in the same manner, stared up the wicket at the new man Wally Luckes when the third appeal was made. After a pregnant pause, almost in disbelief, he famously announced, `As God's my witness, that's out, too.' and lifted his finger to send the luckless batsman back to the pavilion. It was quite a game for Fisher, as he also posted his highest ever first class score in Yorkshire's only innings, an unbeaten 76, against the cidermen as Yorkshire ran out winners by an innings and 93. Earlier in the same week Fisher had taken his career best figures, six wickets for 11 runs, against Leicestershire CCC at Bradford.
