Reggie Spooner — Lancashire Stylist, Test Debut 1905

The Lancashire side of 1903-05 was almost a mirror image of Yorkshire's contemporary champions. Where Yorkshire had Hirst, Rhodes and Haigh, Lancashire had MacLaren, Tyldesley and Spooner; where Yorkshire's strength was bowling, Lancashire's was batting. The 45-match unbeaten run of 1903-05 was a record at the time.

By July 1905 the selectors could no longer ignore Spooner's domestic record — six centuries in 1904 and a strong start to 1905. His call-up for Old Trafford was widely welcomed in the Manchester press.

Spooner was born at Litherland, Lancashire in October 1880 and educated at Marlborough College, where he was a brilliant schoolboy cricketer. He played his first first-class match for Lancashire in 1899 aged 18, but then disappeared to military service with the Manchester Regiment in the Second Boer War, returning to first-class cricket only in 1903.

The return was sensational. In July 1903 he made 247 v Nottinghamshire at Aigburth, Liverpool — at that time the highest individual score made against Nottinghamshire in any first-class match. In the same season he and Archie MacLaren added 368 for the first wicket against Gloucestershire, a Lancashire opening-stand record that still stands. Between August 1903 and July 1905 Lancashire played 45 successive County Championship matches without defeat, with Spooner, MacLaren and Johnny Tyldesley as the batting backbone.

Wisden made him Cricketer of the Year in 1905 — the same summer England's selectors at last picked him for the fourth Test against Joe Darling's Australians at Old Trafford. He scored 0 and 4 on debut, was retained for the fifth Test at The Oval, and made his maiden Test fifty in subsequent series. In 10 Tests between 1905 and 1912 he made 481 runs at 32.06 with one century — 119 v South Africa at Lord's in the 1912 Triangular Tournament.

First-class career: 13,681 runs at 36.28 with 31 hundreds. Wisden's later assessment: 'one of the most stylish batsmen of the Golden Age.'

“The loveliest batsman of his time.”

Spooner was offered the England captaincy for the 1921 Ashes but declined on health grounds; A. C. MacLaren and Lionel Tennyson led instead. He served in the Manchester Regiment in both World Wars, reaching the rank of Major. He died in Lincolnshire in October 1961, aged 80.