Colin Blythe, the slow left-arm spinner who had taken 100 Test wickets for England and been the heart of Kent's championship sides, was killed by a German shell while laying railway track behind the lines near Ypres on 8 November 1917. He was 38.
Blythe was Kent born and bred. His 215 wickets in the 1909 season is a Kent record. He played the violin to a high standard and was widely regarded as one of the most thoughtful cricketers of his generation.
He had been declared unfit for front-line service because of his epilepsy and posted instead to a railway-construction unit. The unit was supporting the Third Battle of Ypres.
Blythe had played 19 Tests for England between 1901 and 1910, taking 100 wickets at 18.63. For Kent he was the centre of the side that won the County Championship in 1906, 1909, 1910 and 1913. He suffered from epilepsy, which had eventually persuaded him to retire from Test cricket in 1910. When war broke out in 1914 he nevertheless enlisted, eventually serving with the Kent Fortress Engineers. By autumn 1917 his unit was working on the Ypres-Pilckem railway extension behind the front, supplying the Passchendaele offensive. On the evening of 8 November 1917 a German shell burst on his working party at Forest Hall, near Ypres. Blythe and three other men were killed instantly. He was buried at Oxford Road Military Cemetery near Ypres, where his grave is still tended. A memorial at the St Lawrence ground in Canterbury was unveiled in 1919.
1901: Test debut for England
1909: 215 first-class wickets, Kent's championship year
1910: Retires from Tests on health grounds
1914: Enlists in Kent Fortress Engineers
8 Nov 1917: Killed by German shell at Forest Hall, near Ypres
1879
Colin Blythe born in Deptford
1901
Test debut for England
1910
Retires from Tests on health grounds
1914
Enlists in the Kent Fortress Engineers
8 Nov 1917
Killed in action at Forest Hall, near Ypres
“Charlie Blythe was an artist in everything he did.”
Buried at Oxford Road Military Cemetery, Belgium. The Kent committee commissioned a memorial at Canterbury, dedicated in 1919; it remains one of the few permanent county-ground memorials to a single cricketer killed in the war.
England's most artistic pre-war spinner, killed at 38 by a stray shell behind the Passchendaele front.
Blythe is the most prominent English Test cricketer to die in the First World War. His career figures — 100 Test wickets, 2,503 first-class wickets at 16.81 — would in any normal life have led to a long retirement and decades of coaching. The Canterbury memorial is the focus of Kent's annual Remembrance observance.
Yorkshire v Essex
1932-06-16
On 15-16 June 1932 Herbert Sutcliffe (313) and Percy Holmes (224*) put on 555 for the first wicket against Essex at Leyton, breaking the world first-class record for any wicket and adding a layer of folklore — including a scoreboard that read 554 for several minutes and a hastily reversed declaration — that has clung to the partnership ever since.
Australia v England
1933-02-14
With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.