County Championship 2nd P30, W12, L3, D14, NR1
Captain Arthur Carr
In the words of the 1927 Committee Report: ‘The Season will be remembered in Nottinghamshire as a year of tantalizing ill-fortune. Before the last match commenced the championship appeared nearly as good as won but the unexpected happened and Notts finished second to Lancashire – two places higher than in 1926’.
The outstanding performance of the season was ‘Dodge’ Whysall scoring 2028 First-Class runs – the first Nottinghamshire batter to exceed 2000 in a single season.
Whysall finished at the head of the County batters with an average of 47.16, while two veterans of the team, Wilf Payton and George Gunn, came next with figures of 42.69 and 38.26 respectively; Willis Walker again scored over a thousand runs. Altogether five of the team scored one or more centuries – Whysall 5, George Gunn and Payton each 3, Walker 2 and Billy Flint 1.
Larwood injured his knee in July and was unable to bowl for the full season; despite this he took 100 wickets at16.95 in twenty-two matches including eight five wicket innings and taking ten or more in a match three times.
Late in the year, Larwood underwent an operation to remove a displace cartilage, with the Committee expressing the hope that: ‘in 1928 he will help carry Notts. to the top of the Championship Table’.
Two of the three defeats in the season came at the hands of Kent, winning by 5 wickets at Trent Bridge and by an innings and 115 runs – comfortably the worst result of Notts’s season – at Canterbury. The principal reason for this heavy loss was ‘Tich’ Freeman who took eleven wickets in the match as Notts followed on; Sam Staples was unfortunate that his career-best figures of 9-141 in Kent’s only innings was eclipsed by Freeman.
It was the loss to Glamorgan in the last fixture of the season that inflicted the crucial blow to the title-winning prospects. Notts made 233 batting first and the home side replied with 375, opener Eddie Bates scoring 163. Nottinghamshire collapsed to 61 all out – Jack Mercer and Frank Ryan sharing the wickets – to suffer defeat by an innings and 81 runs.
George Heane, who was to have a long career in First-Class cricket and who shared the county captaincy with Stuart Rhodes in 1935 and took sole control the following season, made his debut in 1927 in the match against the visiting New Zealand team. He made just one run and took one wicket in a match that saw no play on day two and finished as a draw.
The other First-Class debutants in 1927 were wicketkeeper Arthur Wheat and left-arm seamer Bill Voce, destined to find a place in cricketing history as part of the 1932-33 Bodyline tour.
In the Minor Counties Competition, as with the County Championship, Notts finished second and came close to winning the division – Staffordshire beating them in a deciding game.
The death was announced of William (Dick) Attewell who had been in bad health for several years and died at Long Eaton on 11 June. His passing, said the Committee, ‘marks the loss of a very great bowler who loved the game…he takes his place in the forefront of Nottinghamshire Cricketers…’
October 2024
Scorecards and stats can be seen here