Reggie Schwarz
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 South Africa (SA) |
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| Batting style | Right-hand bat | |
| Bowling type | - | |
| Tests | First-class | |
| Matches | 20 | 125 |
| Runs scored | 374 | 3798 |
| Batting average | 13.85 | 22.60 |
| 100s/50s | 0/1 | 1/20 |
| Top score | 61 | 102 |
| Balls bowled | 2639 | 13553 |
| Wickets | 55 | 398 |
| Bowling average | 25.76 | 17.58 |
| 5 wickets in innings | 2 | 25 |
| 10 wickets in match | 0 | 3 |
| Best bowling | 6/47 | 8/55 |
| Catches/stumpings | 18/- | 108/- |
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Test debut: 2 January 1906 |
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Major Reginald Oscar Schwarz, known as Reggie (born 4 May 1875 in Lee, London, England, died 18 November 1918 in Etaples, France) was a South African cricketer and international rugby footballer.
Schwarz won three caps for England at rugby against Scotland in 1899, and Wales and Ireland in 1901.
Schwarz played a handful of games for Middlesex in 1901 and 1902 before emigrating to South Africa and joining Transvaal; but it was on his return to England with the South African cricket team in 1904 that he made his mark, having learning from Bosanquet how to bowl the googly. Unusually, he bowled it as his stock delivery, with considerable success: in 1904 and 1907 he topped the bowling averages, in the latter year taking 137 wickets at just 11.70 apiece, and he was named as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1908. On that 1907 tour, the first on which South Africa played Tests in England, they had no fewer than four leg-break and googly bowlers, Schwarz having passed on the secret of the googly to Aubrey Faulkner, Bert Vogler and Gordon White.
Schwarz retired from regular playing after the 1912 season, though he appeared thrice more for L Robinson's XI over the next two seasons. In all he took 398 wickets at a fine 17.58 average, and in Tests he took 55 at 22.60. Despite his poor batting -- he passed fifty only twice in first-class cricket -- Schwarz did make a century: 102 in a non-Test game against an England XI at Lord's in 1904.
Schwarz was a major in the King's Royal Rifle Corps regiment of the British Army who fought on the Western Front in World War I. He survived the war, but died in the Spanish flu epidemic in Etaples, France just seven days after the Armistice had been signed. He was 43.
[edit] External links
- Reggie Schwarz at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database
