George Collins

Who was George Collins?

George Christopher Collins was an English cricketer, who played first-class cricket for Kent County Cricket Club and Marylebone Cricket Club.

Born in Gravesend, Kent, Collins learnt his cricket there and at Cobham, where his father Christopher had played under the captaincy of Ivo Bligh, 8th Earl of Darnley. His father was subsequently groundsman at the Bat and Ball Ground, Gravesend and later ran a sports outfitters in the town, so it was natural that son should follow father into cricket. He played for lower Kent sides from the age of 16, and made his first-class debut during the 1911 season, in a match against Gloucestershire played in the town of his birth.

Described in his Wisden obituary as "a splendid right-arm fast bowler and a useful left-handed batsman"; Collins appeared in 218 first-class matches, taking 379 wickets and scoring 6,280 runs. He also occasionally kept wicket; claiming a stumping off the bowling of Tich Freeman in a 1922 fixture against Yorkshire.

His best bowling performance was in 1922, when after taking six wickets in Nottinghamshire's first innings in a match at Dover's Crabble Athletic Ground, he took all ten wickets in their second innings to bowl Kent to an innings victory. His match figures of 16 for 83 were the second-best match figures at the time recorded, and remain to this day the sixth-best in the county's history.