John Harcombe

John Harcombe

Personal information
Full name	John Dowie Harcombe
Batting	Right-handed
Bowling	Right-arm slow
Role	All-rounder
Domestic team information
Years	Team
1905–19	Somerset
First-class cricket debut	19 June 1905 Somerset v Lancashire
Last First-class cricket	10 June 1919 Somerset v Gloucestershire
Career statistics
Competition First-class Matches 7 Runs scored 76 Batting average 7.60 100s/50s –/– Top score 29 Balls bowled 144 Wickets 3 Bowling average 44.00 5 wickets in innings – 10 wickets in match – Best bowling 3/51 Catches/stumpings 2/–
Source: CricketArchive, 20 March 2011

John Dowie Harcombe (13 March 1883 – 19 July 1954) played first-class cricket for Somerset in seven matches stretched across the years from 1905 to 1919. He was born at Cape Town in South Africa and died at Taunton, Somerset.

Cricket career

Harcombe was a right-handed lower-order batsman and a right-arm slow bowler. He played for Somerset in three matches in 1905, one more in 1914 and then a final three in 1919. He had limited success both as a batsman and as a bowler. His only wickets were taken in his very first match, against Lancashire in 1905. As a batsman he reached double figures only twice in a dozen innings and his highest score was 29, made batting at No 11 in his second first-class match, against Kent in 1905. Harcombe settled in Kenya and played minor cricket there for the Settlers side in the 1920s and 1930s.

War service

Harcombe enlisted as a soldier with the Somerset Light Infantry in the First World War and was a sergeant when he was commissioned in 1916 as a temporary second lieutenant and transferred to the Devonshire Regiment. Earlier in the same year he had been awarded the Military Medal. In 1917 he was granted the rank of acting captain while serving as an adjutant to the Devonshire Regiment. He was allowed to retain the rank of captain when discharged as a second lieutenant in February 1919.