Les Berry

Who was Les Berry?

George Leslie "Les" Berry, born at Dorking, Surrey on 28 April 1906 and died at Great Glen, Leicestershire on 5 February 1985, was a cricketer who played for Leicestershire and holds many of the county's first-class batting records.

A right-handed batsman who started his career in the middle order but became an opener, Berry, who had moved to Market Harborough at the age of eight, joined Leicestershire in the 1924 season, when he played in half the first-class matches but with little success. The following year, however, he made 1,071 runs at an average of 21 and appeared in virtually every match. He was then a regular member of the team until he retired, at the age of 45, at the end of the 1951 season.

As well as the 1,000 runs he scored in 1925, he passed the 1,000-run mark in every English first-class cricket season from 1928 to 1950, and his 2,446 runs at an average of more than 50 runs an innings in 1937 remains the Leicestershire record for a season.