Mark Faber

Mark James Julian Faber, who died in a London hospital on December 10 at the age of 41 was a brilliant allround games player. He, played 57 times for Sussex in the 1970s. As a middle-order batsman he scored over 3,000 first-class runs between 1970 and 1976. In full flight he was one of the cleanest strikers of the cricket ball and was able to transfer this talent to the golf course when he gave up cricket because of injury in the early '80s. His conspicuous cricketing talent was develbped as he progressed through Summerfields, Eton and Oxford. At Eton in 1968 he scored 100 against Harrow at Lord's watched by his grandfather, Harold MacMillan. At Oxford he gained a Blue for both cricket, in 1972, and racquets, another game at which he excelled. With this background he was an unlikely entrant to the harsh world of professional cricket. Although dubbed an amateur when he arrived at Sussex, he soon proved that he was a serious and formidable competitor. He had a lovely touch with people and was universally popular at Hove with everyone from the groundsman, Peter Eaton, to the senior player and severest of critics, John Snow. 'Fates' soon became an established and well respected member of the Sussex side. Some of county cricket's more irksome features, such as a day in the field, did not appeal to his sense of fun and he had other interests of family and business to pursue when he retired from Sussex in 1976, but he did carry on playing club cricket to a high standard, where he was a wily captain and a destroyer of all but the best bowling. I toured with Mark to Hong Kong in 1978 for Lloyd's Cricket Club, where he played an innings against the colony of such ferocity that the hapless fielders were forever retrieving the ball as it bounced down the Wongneichong Gap Road. My favourite recollection was a holiday in France when our car developed a puncture on the autoroute. Whilst we turned our attention to changing the wheel Fabes took out his five iron and proceeded to hit 25 golf balls irretrievably into the middle of nowhere!
Mike Griffith, The Cricketer