Wilton St Hill
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 West Indies (WI) |
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| Batting style | Right-handed batsman | |
| Bowling type | Right-arm medium | |
| Tests | First-class | |
| Matches | 3 | 43 |
| Runs scored | 117 | 1,928 |
| Batting average | 19.50 | 27.15 |
| 100s/50s | 0/0 | 5/7 |
| Top score | 38 | 144 |
| Balls bowled | 12 | 357 |
| Wickets | 0 | 5 |
| Bowling average | - | 41.79 |
| 5 wickets in innings | 0 | 0 |
| 10 wickets in match | 0 | 0 |
| Best bowling | -/- | 2/14 |
| Catches/stumpings | 1/0 | 14/0 |
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Test debut: 23 June 1928 |
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Wilton H St Hill was a West Indian cricketer who played in West Indies' first Test in their inaugural Test tour of England.
St Hill was born on 6 July 1893 in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He was one of the many West Indian cricketers of his time whose Test career started at an advanced age; he was 34 in his first Test. His date of death is unknown: most cricket books, including Wisden Cricketers' Almanack seem to believe he died around 1957.
St Hill was born in a lower middle-class family and worked in a department store for most of his life. He was already a batsman of some repute by 1912 and hit 104 in the inter-colonial match against Guyana in 1921. But after failing in trial matches, he was excluded from the West Indian side that toured England in 1923. When MCC returned the tour in 1925-26, St. Hill hit 105 in two and a half hours at Port of Spain. Lord Harris who watched this innings considered him the best batsman in West Indies at the time. He was selected for the 1928 tour of England after scoring heavily in the trial matches. But in England he was "a horrible, a disastrous, an incredible failure". In 14 matches, he made 262 at an average of 10.91. Against MCC in 1929-30 he scored a hundred in four hours, and made 33 and 30 in his only Test match in the series.
St. Hill is the subject of a chapter in C. L. R. James' Beyond a Boundary. James describes him as about six feet tall, "slim, wiry, with forearms like whipcord" and with a face "bony, with small sharp eyes and a thin, tight mouth". He played mainly off the back-foot with leg-glance and late-cut the most notable strokes.
His younger brother Edwin St Hill also played Test cricket for the West Indies and a second brother, Cyl St Hill played once for Trinidad and Tobago.
[edit] References
- C. L. R. James, Beyond a Boundary, Duke University Press (1998), pp. 82-97. The direct quotes are all from this book.
- Christopher Martin-Jenkins, The Complete Who's Who of Test Cricketers, Queen Anne Press (1986)
