James Neblett

James Montague Neblett, a middle-order batsman and a leg-break bowler, was born in Taylor’s Land, St. Michael in Barbados on 13 November 1901 and died in Mackenzie, British Guiana on 28 March 1959, aged 57. Although he once represented a "Barbados-born" team against the rest of West Indies, the match in which he recorded his best single-innings bowling figures, four for 82, his domestic career was spent playing for British Guiana during the 1920s and 1930s. His first three first-class matches were all played against the touring M.C.C. at Bourda, Georgetown in February, 1926. He performed moderately well, for whilst he did nothing of note with the bat opening or playing up the order for British Guiana, he took three wickets in each match for a total of 216 runs. He toured England with the West Indies in 1928 under the captaincy of R.K. Nunes, the first official Caribbean tour to this country, but only played in eight of the first-class matches, none of which were in the three-match Test series. Against Cambridge University in a match played at Fenner's, he surpassed his previous top score of 59 when scoring 61 in West Indies’ first innings. But on no other occasion in his career did he go past fifty runs in an innings. After a five-year break from major cricket, his sole Test appearance owed a lot to West Indies’ policy of playing ‘home’ players in an effort to keep expenses down. Playing against an England XI led by R.E.S. Wyatt at Bourda in February 1935, Neblett scored 11 not out and 5, and took one for 75 with the ball. This proved to be his penultimate match – he played once more in 1938 – and he later died without having an obituary written for him for the pages of Wisden.

References

1. World Cricketers - A Biographical Dictionary by Christopher Martin-Jenkins published by Oxford University Press (1996),
2. The Wisden Book of Test Cricket, Volume 1 (1877–1977) compiled and edited by Bill Frindall published by Headline Book Publishing (1995),
3. The Complete Record of West Indian Test Cricketers by Bridgette Lawrence & Ray Goble published by ACL & Polar Publishing (UK) Ltd. (1991),
4. www.cricketarchive.com/Archive/Players.