| Personal information | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | George Robert Canning Harris | |||
| Born | 3 February 1851 St Anne's, Trinidad and Tobago |
|||
| Died | 24 March 1932 (aged 81) Faversham, Kent, England |
|||
| Nickname | Lord Harris | |||
| Batting style | Right-handed | |||
| Bowling style | Right-arm round-arm fast | |||
| Role | All-rounder, administrator | |||
| International information | ||||
| National side | England | |||
| Test debut (cap 13) | 2 January 1879 v Australia | |||
| Last Test | 11 August 1884 v Australia | |||
| Domestic team information | ||||
| Years | Team | |||
| 1870 – 1911 | Kent | |||
| 1871 – 1895 | MCC | |||
| 1871 – 1874 | Oxford University | |||
| Career statistics | ||||
| Competition | Tests | FC | ||
| Matches | 4 | 224 | ||
| Runs scored | 145 | 9990 | ||
| Batting average | 29.00 | 26.85 | ||
| 100s/50s | 0/1 | 11/55 | ||
| Top score | 52 | 176 | ||
| Balls bowled | 32 | 3446 | ||
| Wickets | 0 | 75 | ||
| Bowling average | – | 23.44 | ||
| 5 wickets in innings | – | 1 | ||
| 10 wickets in match | – | 0 | ||
| Best bowling | – | 5/57 | ||
| Catches/stumpings | 2/– | 190/– | ||
| Source: [1], 24 March 1932 | ||||
George Robert Canning Harris, 4th Baron Harris, GCSI, GCIE (3 February 1851 – 24 March 1932) was a British politician, cricketer and cricket administrator. He succeeded to his title in November 1872, before which he was known as The Honourable George Harris.
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He was born in Trinidad when his father, George Harris, 3rd Baron Harris, was serving as Governor, then moved to Madras when his father was posted to the governorship there. At the age of 13, the young Harris was sent to Eton to finish his education. His first important cricket match was the 1868 Eton-Harrow fixture at Lord's, where the eighteen-year-old started inauspiciously with 23 and six. In the same fixture the following year, when CJ Ottaway scored his celebrated 108 to seal victory for Eton by an innings and nineteen runs, Harris went runless, and, in 1870 (by which time he was on the Kent Committee), he managed just twelve and seven.
Lord Harris was the second-ever captain of the English cricket team. He also played for Kent and Oxford University. He won two of his four Tests as English captain, losing one and drawing the other.
In 1878-1879, Harris led a touring England side to Australia. They played one Test match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground – the third Test ever played. Australia, led by Dave Gregory, won by 10 wickets. Later in the tour, a match against New South Wales led to the Sydney Riot of 1879 when an umpire employed by the English team made a decision against the locals.
Harris led England against Australia on three further occasions:
He played for Kent for over forty years, from 1870 to 1911, captaining them from 1871 to 1889 (some sources (e.g. CricketArchive) say 1875-1889, with no official captaincy appointment for 1871-4). He was President in 1875 and Secretary from 1875 to 1880.[1]
In the early 1880s there were a number of bowlers who were widely considered to have unfair actions, with the Lancashire pair of Jack Crossland and George Nash coming in for particular criticism. After playing for Kent against Lancashire in 1885, when he faced the bowling of Crossland and Nash, Harris decided to take action. He persuaded the Kent committee to cancel the return fixture. Later that season, Crossland was found to have broken his residential qualification for Lancashire by living in Nottinghamshire, and Nash dropped out of the side. Thus the two counties resumed playing each other the following season. Harris's Wisden obituarist wrote: "...there can be no doubt the action of Lord Harris, even if it did not entirely remove the throwing evil, had a very healthy effect on the game."[2]
He had a long association with Lord's as both player and administrator. In 1862, aged eleven, he was practising at Lord's. It was not till 1929, at the remarkably advanced age of seventy-eight, that he played there for the last time, for MCC v Indian Gymkhana.[3] He served as President of the MCC in 1895. He was a Trustee of MCC from 1906 to 1916 and Honorary Treasurer from 1916 to 1932. Additionally he was for some years chairman of the MCC Finance and Cricket Sub-committees. It is therefore not surprising that it was written of him: 'No man has exercised so strong an influence on the cricket world so long...'[4]
In July, 1909 he chaired a meeting of representatives of England, Australia and South Africa which launched the Imperial Cricket Conference and agreed rules to control Test cricket between the three nations. In 1926, he presided at a meeting at The Oval, when it was agreed that 'governing bodies of cricket in countries within the Empire to which cricket teams are sent, or which send teams to England' should be eligible for ICC membership. The meeting had the effect of creating three new Test-playing nations: West Indies, New Zealand and India.[5]
Not all thought that he used his power well. Alan Gibson once wrote that he was 'an antediluvian old tyrant', though he later retracted this, saying that Harris was a more complex figure than that.[6] But, complex or not, Harris was never accused by contemporaries of being an intellectual; and he might have robbed England of the services of one of its greatest batsmen, Walter Hammond. Hammond had been born in Kent but chose to play for Gloucestershire, where he had gone to school. Hammond had not fulfilled the required period of residence to qualify, and once Harris discovered this Hammond was barred from playing for them again until the necessary time had elapsed. The affair resulted in Harris complaining about what he called 'Bolshevism' influencing cricket.
Lord Harris served in the House of Lords as Under-Secretary of State for India from 25 June 1885, then as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for War from 4 August 1886 to 1890 in the Conservative Government.
He served as Governor of the Presidency of Bombay in British India from 1890 to 1895. His appointment was not universally well regarded, with one anonymous writer penning a poem expressing the hope that Bombay would not suffer too greatly from Harris' political inexperience.[7]
His governorship was notable mainly for his enthusiastic pursuit of the sport of cricket amongst his fellow Europeans in the colony, at the expense of connecting with the native population. When the interracial Bombay riots of 1893 broke out, Harris was out of the city at Ganeshkind enjoying cricket matches. He returned to Bombay only on the ninth day of rioting, and then primarily to attend a cricket match there.[8]
Many later writers credited Harris with almost single-handedly introducing and developing the sport in India. The game was, however, well established among the natives before his arrival. Furthermore, in 1890, he rejected a petition signed by over 1,000 locals to relocate European polo players to another ground so that the locals could use the area for cricket matches. It was only in 1892 that he granted a parcel of land to the newly formed Mahomedan Gymkhana for a cricket field, adjacent to land already used by the Parsi Gymkhana. His reluctance to do so is evident in his written comment:
When Harris left India, having virtually ignored famine, riots and sectarian unrest, a publisher circulated a collection of newspaper extracts from his time as governor. The introduction stated:
On his return to England, Harris again served in the Conservative Government, as a Lord in Waiting, from 16 July 1895 to 4 December 1900.
Lord Harris married the Hon. Lucy Ada Jervis, daughter of Carnegie Robert John Jervis, 3rd Viscount St Vincent, in 1874. He died in March 1932, aged 82, and was succeeded in the barony by his son George.
| Sporting positions | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by No regular appointment |
Kent County Cricket Club captain 1875–1889 |
Succeeded by Frank Marchant and William Patterson |
| Preceded by James Lillywhite |
English national cricket captain 1878/9–1880 |
Succeeded by Alfred Shaw |
| Preceded by Hon. Ivo Bligh |
English national cricket captain 1884 |
Succeeded by Arthur Shrewsbury |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by John Kynaston Cross |
Under-Secretary of State for India 1885–1886 |
Succeeded by Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth, Bt |
| Preceded by The Lord Sandhurst |
Under-Secretary of State for War 1886–1890 |
Succeeded by The Earl Brownlow |
| Preceded by The Lord Reay |
Governor of Bombay 1890–1895 |
Succeeded by The Lord Sandhurst |
| Preceded by The Lord Hawkesbury |
Lord-in-Waiting 1895–1900 |
Succeeded by The Lord Kenyon |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| Preceded by George Harris |
Baron Harris 1872–1932 |
Succeeded by George Harris |