Cec Parkin

Who was Cec Parkin?

Cecil Harry "Cec" Parkin was an English cricketer who played in 10 Tests from 1920 to 1924 and 157 games for Lancashire County Cricket Club.

He played one first-class match for Yorkshire in 1906, before it was discovered that he was born twenty yards outside the county boundary. Despite the fact that many cricketers had appeared for Yorkshire who were not born inside the county boundaries he then spent the next 8 years playing league and minor county cricket. He then joined Lancashire and played at Old Trafford from 1914 to 1926, although four of these years were lost to the Great War. He was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1924.

He was a mercurial, inventive off spinner who used flight, guile and turn to dismiss batsman and demanded attacking fields from his captains. He could be expensive, as he disdained any policy of containment against good batsmen on flat pitches, but at his best he could run through any side. He took 14 Leicestershire County Cricket Club wickets on his debut for the Red Rose at Liverpool in 1914, when he was already 28, and did not become a full-time cricketer until the age of 34 in 1921, the year he topped the Test averages against Warwick Armstrong's mighty Australian side. Before then he had combined his Saturday league commitments with appearances for Lancashire.