Full Name

John Hyams

Born

December 18, 1919, Lambeth, London

Died

May 02, 2012 (aged 92y 136d)

No man in the history of club cricket scored more runs than Jack Hyams, who amassed more than 125,000 runs with 176 centuries, in an eight-decade career that began as a 14-year-old in 1934.

After celebrating his 90th birthday in December 2009, Hyams even managed to play 11 matches for Nomads and Billericay Veterans in 2010, his final active season.

Among his many roles in the sport, Hyams was the Life President of the Barmy Army, as well as an MCC senior coach and an ACU-qualified umpire.

During World War 2, he had been an RAF gunner, spending a year protecting the North Atlantic convoys before becoming a PE instructor thereafter.

His most productive club season came in 1953, when he scored 4,328 runs. His career-best was 199 not out in an RAF match in Oxfordshire in 1944, and he also took an estimated 1300 wickets.

In all, Hyams played for more than 50 clubs, including spell in the Bradford and Birmingham Leagues. He ended his career at Cockfosters and Billericay, having played for such clubs as MCC, the Club Cricket Conference, the Stoics, the Forty Club and the Nomads.

Among the players he came up against along the way were Jack Hobbs, Clive Lloyd, Jim Laker, Fred Trueman, Denis Compton, Basil D'Oliveira, and Wes Hall, whom he reckoned was the fastest bowler he ever faced.

A talented footballer as well as a cricketer, he played for Bradford Park Avenue after the war, and took part in a famous defeat of Arsenal in the FA Cup in 1948.

He died on May 2, 2012, at the age of 92, after a series of strokes had ended his playing days.