Harry Foster

Who was Harry Foster?

Henry Knollys "Harry" Foster MBE, born at Malvern, Worcestershire, on 30 October 1873 and died at Kingsthorne, Herefordshire on 23 June 1950, was a cricketer who played for Oxford University and Worcestershire. He first played for Worcestershire in 1888 at the age of only 14 years old.

The oldest of seven brothers who played cricket for Worcestershire, Harry Foster was a forceful right-handed middle-order batsman who acted as captain at Worcestershire for 11 of the first 12 season in which the county competed in the County Championship. He was also for many of those seasons second only to his brother R.E. "Tip" Foster as the county's leading batsman.

Foster first played first-class cricket at Oxford. Not picked for any matches at all in 1893, he won a Blue against Cambridge in each of the next three seasons. In the Varsity match of 1895, he scored 121 in two hours as Oxford, set a target of 331 to win, reached just 196 all out.

Foster captained Worcestershire in the county's very first Championship match in 1899 and led the side every season until 1910, except for 1901. He scored 1,000 runs in a season eight times, and five times averaged more than 40 runs per innings. Among his 29 first-class centuries, he hit 216 against Somerset in 1903 — the first double hundred for Worcestershire in first-class cricket —and 215 against Warwickshire in 1908, both at Worcester.