Robert Ramsay (cricketer)

Robert Christian Ramsay (20 December 1861 – 25 June 1957) was an amateur cricketer who played for Cambridge University and Somerset in the early 1880s.

Life and career

Robert Christian Ramsay was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire on 20 December 1861 as the second son of Robert Ramsay and Susan née Lindsay Carnegie. He attended Ipswich Grammar School in Queensland, Australia until the family moved to England in 1874. He then attended Elstree School and Harrow School. At Harrow, he played for the school's cricket team, alongside his older brother Francis Ramsay.^[1] In 1879, the brothers combined to take seventeen of Eton College's twenty wickets, of which Robert claimed six in the first innings and four in the second.^[2]

Ramsay followed his older brother to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and in his first year played in the freshmen's trial match, in which he claimed six wickets, five of them in the first innings.^[3] He played one first-class match for the university that summer, bowling ten overs without taking a wicket against Yorkshire.^[4] He also played five second-class matches during 1881, all for Somerset County Cricket Club. His best performance for Somerset during that time was against Kent, against whom he claimed six first innings' wickets.^[5]

The following year at Cambridge, Ramsay played nine first-class matches for the university, and gained his blue.^[6] His first match in the summer of 1882 was played for the university against the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), a match which Cambridge won by 189, aided by the strong bowling of Ramsay, who claimed 13 wickets and conceded just 49 runs, a performance bettered for the university only nine times.^[7] Later in the summer he claimed eight wickets against Lancashire,^[8] and then picked up 12 wickets against the touring Australians, collecting five wickets in the first innings and seven in the second, albeit more expensively than in the match against the MCC.^[9] He was less prolific against Lancashire at Old Trafford, during a match played in such cold weather that catches were hard to hold. Bill Roe said that during this match, Lancashire's number eleven, George Nash was dropped off every ball of an over bowled by Ramsay, before Roe himself caught the professional off the first ball of the following over.^[10] Ramsay was selected to play for the "Gentlemen of England" against the touring Australians, and claimed three wickets in a match which the Australians won by an innings.^[11] In the University match against Oxford, Ramsay was largely ineffective, taking two wickets from his 52 overs, during which he conceded 91 runs. Cambridge won the match by seven wickets, thanks primarily to the brothers; Charles and George Studd.^[12]

References