Geoffrey Frank Anson (8 October 1922 – 4 December 1977) was an English cricketer and civil servant.[1] A right-handed batsman, he played ten first-class cricket matches during the 1947 English cricket season for Cambridge University and Kent County Cricket Club.[2] He also played cricket for a team of Europeans in Nigeria whilst serving in the British Colonial Service.
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Geoffrey Frank Anson | ||||||||||||||
| Born | (1922-10-08)8 October 1922 Sevenoaks, Kent | ||||||||||||||
| Died | 4 December 1977(1977-12-04) (aged 55) Hastings, Sussex | ||||||||||||||
| Batting | Right-handed | ||||||||||||||
| Role | Batsman | ||||||||||||||
| Domestic team information | |||||||||||||||
| Years | Team | ||||||||||||||
| 1947 | Cambridge University | ||||||||||||||
| 1947 | Kent | ||||||||||||||
| FC debut | 10 May 1947 Cambridge University v Essex | ||||||||||||||
| Last FC | 23 August 1947 Kent v Somerset | ||||||||||||||
| Career statistics | |||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Source: CricInfo, 19 March 2017 | |||||||||||||||
Anson was born at Sevenoaks in Kent in 1922 and educated at Harrow School, where he played cricket and captained the side during his final season in 1941.[3] Wisden considered that he might have been the "best schoolboy batsman of the year" and described him as being a "daring stroke player".[4] He initially went up to the University of Cambridge in 1941 and played cricket for the University side during the summer of 1942,[5] before serving in the armed forces during World War II. He was commissioned in the Coldstream Guards as a 2nd Lieutenant in April 1943[6] and served in the 4th Battalion, part of the Guards Armoured Division.[7] He was awarded the Military Cross in May 1945 whilst serving as a Lieutenant.[8] Anson was serving as a tank commander during Operation Veritable, an offensive along the Siegfried Line on the Dutch-German border near Nijmegen in February. He had dismounted to organise mine clearance parties to allow the capture of Frasselt by the 9th Cameronians.[9]
He went back to Cambridge in 1946 before leaving to join the Colonial Service the following summer.[10][11] Anson made his first-class cricket debut for the University against Essex in May 1947[2] and was set to win a Blue before "the claims of the Colonial Service forced him to withdraw from the side and he was unable to play in the University match".[11] Later in the year he played seven County Championship matches for Kent, his last first-class match coming against Somerset in August.[2]
Anson worked in the Colonial Service and played a number of matches for Nigeria Europeans against Gold Coast Europeans between 1949 and 1956.[5][10] He later played for the Kent Second XI between 1957 and 1959[2] and worked as an area manager for the Ford Motor Credit Company based in London.[7] He died at Hastings in 1977 aged 55.[1]
Geoffrey Anson at ESPNcricinfo