#ken farnes

Ken Farnes Killed in RAF Training Crash — Chipping Warden, October 1941

On the night of 20 October 1941, the England Test fast bowler Pilot Officer Ken Farnes was killed when his Vickers Wellington bomber crashed shortly after take-off from RAF Chipping Warden in Oxfordshire on a night-flying training exercise. Farnes was 30, had taken 60 wickets in 15 Tests between 1934 and 1939, and had been one of the few amateurs in the country considered the equal of the leading Australian fast bowlers. His death, just 11 weeks before Hedley Verity was wounded in Sicily, was the first major loss of an active England Test cricketer in the Second World War.