Norman Partridge (cricketer)

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Norman Ernest Partridge, born at Great Barr, Birmingham, on August 10, 1900 and died at Aberystwyth on March 10, 1982, was a cricketer who played for Cambridge University and Warwickshire. But his wider claim to notability is that he was selected in 1919, while a schoolboy at Malvern College, by Wisden as one its five Cricketers of the Year, there being no first-class cricket from which to choose outstanding performers.

Partridge's record at Malvern as a right-hand batsman and fast-medium in-swing bowler also led him, in 1919, to be chosen to play for the Gentlemen in the annual Gentlemen v Players match between the amateurs and the professionals at Lord's, then one of the highlights of the cricket season. But his school refused to allow him to take part.

Unlike some of the other schoolboys chosen in 1918 and 1919 as Wisden Cricketers of the Year, Partridge had a respectable later career in first-class cricket. He was at Cambridge for only one year, 1920, but won a Blue in the Varsity match. From 1921 to 1937 he played for Warwickshire, fairly regularly at first, latterly more seldom. He usually batted low in the batting order, but a career average of 18 suggests competence and he frequently opened the bowling. In all first-class cricket he scored more than 2,700 runs and took 393 wickets.

Partridge's obituary in Wisden 1983^[1] recounts that there was some doubt about the legality of his bowling action, though he was never called for throwing. It says: "A batsman whom he had comprehensively bowled said indignantly to Tiger Smith behind the wicket, 'He threw that'. 'Yes,' said Tiger, 'and bloody well too'."