Frank Woolley's Decade — The Pride of Kent Comes Into His Own, 1910-1914

Woolley joined Kent in 1906, the year of their first Championship win. He was 19. By 1910 he was the team's most consistent performer.

Kent won the Championship in 1909, 1910 and 1913 — three titles built around Blythe's bowling and Woolley's batting.

Woolley made his Kent debut in 1906 and his first Test in 1909. By 1910 he was Kent's leading batsman; in 1911 he scored over 2,000 first-class runs. Through 1912 — the wet Triangular summer in which most batsmen suffered — he scored a beautiful 133 against Australia at the Oval. In 1913 he hit 1,800 runs and took 121 wickets. By 1914 he was indisputably one of the leading three batsmen in England alongside Hobbs and Hayward. The war interrupted him; he served in the Royal Naval Air Service and saw active duty at Mudros in the Eastern Mediterranean. When he returned in 1919 he was 32 and went on to play until 1938, scoring 58,969 first-class runs (still second on the all-time list) and taking 2,066 wickets. The 1910-14 emergence is the often-overlooked first half of one of the longest first-class careers in cricket history.

“There was all summer in a stroke by Woolley.”

Woolley returned in 1919 and played for another two decades. He died in 1978 at the age of 91.