Vivian Crawford
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Leicester, Leicestershire, England
Merton, London, England
 Crawford in 1904 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Full name | Vivian Frank Shergold Crawford | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | 11 April 1879 Leicester, Leicestershire, England | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Died | 21 August 1922 (aged 43) Merton, London, England | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Batting | Right-handed | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bowling | Right-arm fast | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Role | Batsman | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Relations | JC Crawford (father) JN Crawford (brother) RT Crawford (brother) FF Crawford (uncle) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Domestic team information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Years | Team | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1896–1902 | Surrey | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1903–1910 | Leicestershire | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| First-class debut | 22 June 1896 Surrey v Oxford University | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last First-class | 3 September 1910 Leicestershire v Surrey | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Career statistics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Source: CricketArchive, 20 August 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Vivian Frank Shergold Crawford (11 April 1879 – 21 August 1922) was an English cricketer who played as a right-handed batsman and an occasional right-arm fast bowler in first-class cricket for Surrey and Leicestershire between 1896 and 1910.[1] He also played for many amateur teams. He was born in Leicester and died at Merton, Surrey. He was the brother of the England Test cricketer Jack Crawford and of the Leicestershire first-class cricketer Reginald Crawford.
During his lifetime, he was generally referred to as "Frank Crawford".[2]
Though born in Leicester, Crawford was brought up in Surrey where his father had become chaplain at the Cane Hill mental hospital at Coulsdon.[3] He was an outstanding schoolboy cricketer at Whitgift School, and played for Surrey in 1896 as a 17-year-old while still at school.[2] At school and in early club cricket, according to a tribute to him written in the 1923 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack by his Surrey colleague Digby Jephson, he was regarded primarily as a fast bowler, and he took eight wickets in an innings for 35 runs against the full Surrey team in a minor match in 1895.[4] The following year, according to the same source, he hit 218 before lunch in a match for Surrey's Young Amateurs team against the Young Professionals: "the sort of innings many of us would tramp long, weary miles to see," Jephson wrote.[4]
Crawford's second first-class game after his debut in 1896 was a Gentlemen v Players match at Hastings at the end of the 1897 season when his captain was W. G. Grace.[5] In 1898 and 1899, he appeared in around half of Surrey's first-class games and in the 1899 match against Somerset in which Surrey amassed a total of 811, he scored his first century with an innings of 129, although his effort was somewhat overshadowed by Bobby Abel's 357 not out, where the diminutive opening batsman carried his bat.[6]
Crawford played regularly for Surrey in only three seasons, from 1900 to 1902, while the team was captained by Jephson. Batting largely in the lower middle order, he was renowned for fast scoring, but Jephson wrote that "he was essentially a scientific hitter not a slogger".[4] He added: "He was strictly orthodox in all his methods of attack or defence, and the straightness of his bat was a thing to marvel at... He will go down to posterity as one of the greatest straight drivers the game has known."[4]
He scored more than 1,000 runs in each of the three seasons he was a regular at Surrey, with a best aggregate of 1511 runs at an average of 32.14 in 1901, when he captained the team in two games.[7] His highest innings for Surrey was also in 1901: he scored 159 against Worcestershire at The Oval.[8] Jephson's reminiscence in the 1923 Wisden recalled another innings in that season, in which Crawford hit flagstaffs on the two towers of the football pavilion at the Park Avenue ground, Bradford with straight drives for six.[4] The match against Yorkshire was the first one in which Crawford captained Surrey.[9]
After the 1901 English cricket season, Crawford joined other amateurs on a tour to North America captained by Bernard Bosanquet; two of the matches against the Philadelphian cricket team were designated as first-class games.
In 1902, Crawford had his nearest brush with Test selection: he was picked for "An England XI" to play the Australian touring team in a game at Eastbourne, but he did not then win further selection for the Tests that summer.[10] Towards the end of the season, Jephson was injured and Crawford captained Surrey in eight matches; his final match for the team was against Leicestershire where the opposition included his brother Reginald.[11]