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Captain Edward George ('Teddy') WYNYARD

In Hampshire’s Archives is an old cricket bat, dark with oil and age, scars of long perished binding around its meat and perished handle. High on the blade’s front its former owner stuck paper in the shape of a shield and on it he recorded his achievements in the season of 1896, when he used it during Hampshire’s second year in the County Championship and his finest in a career that lasted thirty years from his debut in 1878.

The owner was ‘Teddy’ Wynyard and that debut for Hampshire against the MCC at Lord’s came at the age of 17. He had left Charterhouse School the previous summer and, over his career, he mixed batting for his adopted county with the life a soldier officer in defence of the empire. He had been born into the British Empire in Bengal, India, the son of a British Civil Servant and qualified for Hampshire after his family moved back to live in the county. He went back to India and Burma as a soldier and then in the early 1890s scored runs for Hampshire, which helped their cause in gaining entry to the Championship in 1895 – not least three consecutive hundreds in August 1894.

During that first memorable Championship season, Hampshire’s captain was Russell Bencraft who did so much on and off the field to establish the county in its earliest, difficult years. In 1896 Bencraft handed leadership on the field to ‘Teddy’ Wynyard and he set the finest example with four centuries in 16 matches as Hampshire finished eighth. Yorkshire were the Champions but when they came to Southampton, Wynyard scored 268, at the time the highest score for Hampshire in first-class cricket. The northerners followed-on and only just avoided defeat.

Wynyard was present at the crease three years later when his Hampshire record was broken by fellow army officer Robert Poore against Somerset at Southampton. Poore reached 300 and he and Wynyard put on 411 for the sixth wicket. For over 100 years this remained the highest for any partnership except the first in first-class cricket.

By then ‘Teddy’ Wynyard had represented England against Australia but his soldiering duties prevented him from playing regularly. Even in 1899, when he averaged nearly fifty, he played only 19 Championship innings and, from that year until 1902, he served in the Boer War, a conflict that deprived Hampshire of a number of major players.

After this, Wynyard played infrequently for Hampshire until his final match in 1908 but he toured regularly with the MCC and other sides and, as late as 1923, he went to Canada with the Free Foresters at the age of 61.

Wynyard was one of the last of the lob bowlers, a fine field and a superb all-round sportsman. He won an FA Cup medal with Old Carthusians in 1881, played rugby and hockey and in 1899 won the International Toboggan Race at Davros. He was perhaps the epitome of the Victorian ‘all-rounder’ gentlemen although it was said of him that he was the worst tempered man in the land!