Ralph Hancock (cricketer)

Ralph Hancock

Personal information
Full name	Ralph Escott Hancock
Born	20 December 1887 Llandaff, Glamorgan, Wales
Died	29 October 1914 (aged 26) Festubert, La Bassee, France
Batting style	Right-handed
Role	Batsman
Relations	Uncle, William Hancock
Domestic team information
Years	Team
1907–14	Somerset
First-class debut	29 August 1907 Somerset v South Africans
Last First-class	27 May 1914 Somerset v Sussex
Career statistics
Competition First-class Matches 9 Runs scored 206 Batting average 12.11 100s/50s –/– Top score 34 Balls bowled 42 Wickets – Bowling average – 5 wickets in innings – 10 wickets in match – Best bowling 0/6 Catches/stumpings –/–
Source: CricketArchive, 20 March 2011

Ralph Escott Hancock (20 December 1887 – 29 October 1914) played first-class cricket for Somerset in nine matches between 1907 and 1914.^[1] He was born at Llandaff in Glamorgan and died in the First World War at Festubert, La Bassee, France.

Ralph Hancock's father was Frank Hancock, a member of the Cardiff brewing company and a pioneering rugby union international for Wales; his uncles Froude Hancock and William Hancock played rugby union for England and William also appeared in one cricket match for Somerset in 1892.

Educated at Rugby School, Ralph Hancock was a right-handed middle-order batsman and an occasional bowler. He made his first-class cricket debut in the match against the South Africans at Bath in 1907, but achieved little in that game, nor in two further matches in 1908. He then disappeared from first-class cricket for four seasons before reappearing, with greater success, in four games in the 1913 season. These games included the match against Sussex at Eastbourne, in which Hancock scored 28 and 34, the two highest scores of his first-class career.^[2] He was not successful in two games in the 1914 season.

Hancock was serving as a Lieutenant in the Devonshire Regiment when he was killed less than three months into the First World War. According to his record in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order and had been mentioned in dispatches.^[3] The same source records that he was survived by his parents, who were then living in Wiveliscombe, Somerset and by his wife Mary Hamilton Hancock.

References

1. "Ralph Hancock". www.cricketarchive.com. Retrieved 2011-03-15.
2. "Scorecard: Sussex v Somerset". www.cricketarchive.com. 1913-08-11. Retrieved 2011-03-17.
3. "Hancock, Ralph Escott". Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Retrieved 2011-03-17.