Roy Kilner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 England (Eng) |
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| Batting style | Left-handed batsman (LHB) | |
| Bowling type | Slow left arm orthodox (SLA) | |
| Tests | First-class | |
| Matches | 9 | 416 |
| Runs scored | 233 | 14,707 |
| Batting average | 33.28 | 30.01 |
| 100s/50s | 0/2 | 18/82 |
| Top score | 74 | 206 not out |
| Balls bowled | 2,368 | 58,678 |
| Wickets | 24 | 1003 |
| Bowling average | 30.58 | 18.45 |
| 5 wickets in innings | 0 | 48 |
| 10 wickets in match | 0 | 10 |
| Best bowling | 4/58 | 8/26 |
| Catches/stumpings | 6/0 | 266/0 |
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Test debut: June 14, 1924 |
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Roy Kilner (born October 17, 1890, Low Valley, Wombwell, Barnsley, Yorkshire, England; died April 5, 1928, Kendray, Barnsley, Yorkshire, England) was arguably the best genuine all-rounder of the inter-war period and the most critical factor in Yorkshire's outstanding County Championship record during the early to middle 1920s, when they won four consecutive Championship and achieved a record 25 wins in 1923. Kilner's premature decline in health and early death at the age of 37 is indeed a tragedy to be compared to the deaths of Archie Jackson and Jock Cameron in the following decade, and put a temporary brake on Yorkshire amazing run of successes in county cricket during the late 1920s.
Although his Test record appears moderate, in 1924/1925 Roy Kilner showed himself the only English spin bowler capable of mastering the rock-hard Australian wickets of the 1920s and 1930s, when Australia's climate was at its driest since records began. On that tour he was the only bowler who ever looked like giving Maurice Tate any genuine support, and his excellent bowling in the last three Tests under conditions impossible for most English spinners was worth much more than his Test record suggests.
Kilner began his career very slowly in the period before World War I as a middle order left hand batsman. However, he jumped to prominence as a hard hitter in 1913 with 1586 runs, a total he did not succeed in bettering during the remainder of his career. His driving on the off side and strong pulling already captured the imagination of critics, but, after that, Kilner was rather slow to develop, although he scored 206 not out on a bland wicket against Derbyshire in 1920.
During the war, Roy Kilner was severely wounded in the right wrist, but this never affected his batting. Though he bowled very occasionally in his early years, not until the tragic deaths of Major Booth and left-arm medium pacer Alonzo Drake did Kilner take bowling seriously. Taking 63 wickets in 1921, he made the most remarkable advance to become the best professional bowler in England the following year, joining that long and illustrious line of Yorkshire left-arm spinners, which includes such names as Ikey Hodgson, Ted Peate, Bobby Peel, Wilfred Rhodes, Hedley Verity and Johnny Wardle.
This advance was due to his amazing accuracy and remarkable imagination. Though essentially a finger spinner, Roy Kilner would often bowl over the wicket and deliver the odd chinaman or googly without warning from batsmen. His skill made him very successful even on firm wickets and on the many sticky wickets his spin and the difficulty in hitting him presented difficulty to the very best of batsmen. This remarkable development as a bowler allowed Yorkshire to carry all before them in 1922 and 1923, yet Roy Kilner did not lose his batting. Indeed, in 1923 he scored 1401 runs at an average of over 34, yet was so consistent his highest score was only 79. He played in the major representative games and was steady but never startling, but in a season where a record twelve players achieved the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets, Kilner was according to good judges undeniably the best all-round cricketer in the game.
1924 saw his batting decline so severely that he did not even score 500 runs for Yorkshire. Whilst his bowling in the appalling weather was as deadly as ever, his selection for the Ashes tour based on his sterling all-round work (113 and 6 for 20 on a sticky wicket) for the Players against the Gentlemen might have seemed a serious risk given his failures on hard wickets against South Africa, it proved a stroke of luck. Though he did not play in the first two Tests, Roy Kilner not only played several good innings in the last three Tests, but also was able to use, owing to his tightness and variation of flight and spin, wickets on which other spinners who were deadly at home had been amazingly harmless. As it turned out, Roy Kilner was the one bowler able to offer any support to the incomparably hard-working Maurice Tate.
1925 saw Roy Kilner decline somewhat in bowling but recover his batting ability, so that he became a certainty for the Tests of 1926. Though he bowled well in the first match, he did little of note afterwards and was so expensive in a number of minor matches that his average in a wetter summer was almost twice what it was in 1923. Roy Kilner was dropped from the Test team for the last Test after four rain-ruined matches.
In 1927, with his health already showing signs of decline, he only barely scored 1,000 runs and his bowling was not deadly even on sticky wickets - though it was as steady and persistent as it had been in his best years from 1922 to 1924.
Roy Kilner's benefit in 1925 against Middlesex - who had threatened not to play Yorkshire the year before due to barracking in a match at Sheffield - realised a then record 4,016 pounds. Roy Kilner was regarded as a charming fellow, moderate in his estimation of his own ability and generous with his colleagues.
During the 1927/1928 off-season Roy Kilner went to India to coach and it was a dreadful shock to Yorkshire and the cricket world when typhoid fever claimed his life about a month before the 1928 season was due to begin. Kilner was just 37. Kilner's funeral, at Wombwell in April 1928, saw over 100,000 people line the streets to pay their respects.
His younger brother Norman Kilner played a few times alongside him with Yorkshire in the 1920s before moving to Warwickshire and becoming one of the mainstays of their batting. Their uncle, Irving Washington, was a promising left-handed batsman for Yorkshire in the early 1900s whose career was, like Roy's, destroyed by illness.
Whilst Yorkshire were almost unbeatable owing to the batting of the incomparable Herbert Sutcliffe, without Kilner they could win so few games that they did not regain the Championship until the emergence of Bowes and Verity in 1931.
