Seymour Clark

Seymour Clark was an engine driver from Weston-super-Mare and one of the most improbable of all county cricketers. He had never played the game at all before he was 25, when he was drafted in to keep wicket for a makeshift railwaymen's side. He turned out to be a brilliant natural wicketkeeper, with fantastic reflexes, and quickly became first choice for the Weston town club. Three years later, when the regular Somerset keeper Wally Luckes was ill, Clark was brought in and, though he had trouble getting time off from the railway, played five matches in 1930. He kept magnificently; however, he is mainly remembered for his batting, which was hopeless. Clark thought his highest score in club cricket was three, and two of them came from overthrows. He bought a new bat when he was picked for the county, but hardly ever made contact, failing to score a run in nine innings (though twice at Kettering his partner got out before he could). Peter Smith of Essex tried to give him one off the mark, and produced a ball that bounced twice before it reached him; Clark still got bowled. He was offered a contract for 1931 but thought the Great Western Railway offered more secure employment. "I got a tremendous kick out of playing for Somerset," he said later, "but it seemed sensible to go back to the locos."
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack