John Neville Crawford (1 December 1886 – 2 May 1963) was an English first-class cricketer who played mainly for Surrey County Cricket Club and South Australia. An amateur, he played as an all-rounder. As a right-handed batsman, Crawford had a reputation for scoring quickly and hitting powerful shots. He bowled medium-paced off spin and was noted for his accuracy and his ability to make the ball turn sharply from the pitch. Unusually for a first-class cricketer, Crawford wore spectacles while playing.

Crawford established a reputation as an outstanding cricketer while still a schoolboy. He played Test cricket for England before he was 20 years old, and successfully toured Australia with the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in 1907–08. He played only 12 matches for England, although critics believed he had a great future in the sport and was a potential future England captain. In two successive English seasons, he completed the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in first-class games.

A dispute over the composition of Surrey's team chosen to play a high-profile game in 1909, after several professional players were omitted for disciplinary reasons, led to an increasingly bitter disagreement between Crawford and the Surrey authorities. Crawford was told he had no future with the club, and moved to Australia. There, he worked as a teacher and continued his cricket career with South Australia. This arrangement had a controversial end, when he clashed with the South Australian Cricket Association over money and moved to New Zealand to play for Otago.

That relationship also ended badly, and he left Otago before being conscripted into the New Zealand armed forces near the end of the First World War. When he was demobilised, he returned to England and made his peace with Surrey. He played a handful of games between 1919 and 1921 but faded out of first-class cricket to pursue a career in industry. In all first-class cricket, Crawford scored 9,488 runs at an average of 32.60 and took 815 wickets at an average of 20.66. Although he continued to play cricket at a lower level, the remainder of Crawford's life passed in relative obscurity.

Early life and career

Jack Crawford was born on 1 December 1886 at Cane Hill, Coulsdon, Surrey, the youngest of three sons of the Rev John Charles Crawford and his wife Alice; the couple also had three daughters. Crawford senior was the chaplain at the recently opened Cane Hill Asylum, in the grounds of which Crawford was born.Burns, Chapter 1, Location 100. He grew up in a cricketing environment. His father and uncle, Frank Crawford, played first-class cricket for Kent; his brothers Vivian and Reginald were also first-class cricketers. The whole family played cricket and encouraged Crawford from a young age, and from the age of eleven he regularly played with adults.Burns, Chapter 1, Location 119.

After attending Glengrove School in Eastbourne,Burns, Chapter 1, Location 143. Crawford went to St Winifred's School in Henley-on-Thames where, in his two years in the cricket team, he scored 2,093 runs and took 366 wickets. In 1902, Crawford moved to Repton School. Reaching the cricket team in his first year, he remained in the eleven until he left the school in 1905. His impact was considerable. A 1906 report in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack rated him as one of the best three schoolboy cricketers in the previous 40 years, matched only by A. G. Steel and Stanley Jackson.Green, ed (1982), p. 335. Cricket historians similarly praised his cricket at Repton. Benny Green notes that his prolific achievements "created ... chaos among schoolboy cricketers."Green (1988), p. 146. Gerald Brodribb describes him as "probably the best ever" schoolboy cricketer.

By 1904, Crawford dominated the Repton team. He scored 759 runs and his 75 wickets were more than the combined total of all the other bowlers in the team. He was particularly effective in the school's most important fixtures. The report in Wisden described him as possibly the best amateur bowler in England that year:Green, ed (1982), pp. 334–35. he bowled medium-paced off spin, although he varied the speed of his delivery from slow to fast. Surrey County Cricket Club took an interest in Crawford almost immediately, calling him to a trial in 1903. Following his achievements in 1904, he was invited to play for the county.Burns, Chapter 1, Location 210. The county club was in the midst of a spell of uncertainty; several men captained the team, but only for a handful of matches each. The composition of the team continually changed, and the team performed poorly, causing unrest among supporters accustomed to success. Crawford was just one of many players brought in as an experiment, albeit one of the most successful.Hart, p. 4. He made his first-class debut against Kent. Taking three wickets and top-scoring in Surrey's first innings with 54, Crawford did well enough to retain his place for another seven games, and was praised in the press for his performances.Burns, Chapter 2, Location 235. Against Gloucestershire, he took seven wickets for 43 runs in the second innings, and a total of ten wickets in the match. In the season as a whole he took 44 first-class wickets at an average of 16.93 to top the county's bowling averages, and scored 229 runs at an average of 16.35.

Although hampered by injuries during the 1905 season for Repton, his last at the school, Crawford scored 766 runs with a batting average of 85. In the five matches in which he was fit to bowl he took 55 wickets at an average under 13. In the August holidays, he returned to play for Surrey. In his second game, he took seven for 90 against Yorkshire and in his third, he scored his maiden first-class century—119 not out against Derbyshire—to become the youngest centurion for the county, a record that was not broken until 2013.Burns, Chapter 2, Location 339. Later, he took eight for 24 against Northamptonshire and scored 142 not out against Leicestershire. At the end of the season, he played in the Hastings Festival,Burns, Chapter 2, Location 373. appearing in several representative games for teams representing the South of England and played for the Rest of England against the County Champions Yorkshire. Crawford finished second in Surrey's batting averages for 1905; in all first-class games he scored 543 runs at an average of 33.93 and took 47 wickets at an average of 18.46. As the season ended, he was invited by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) to join their tour of South Africa that winter.Burns, Chapter 2, Location 376.

International cricketer

Tour to South Africa Having finished his school career, Crawford joined the first MCC tour of South Africa in the 1905–06 season. The team was not particularly strong—before the tour, critics judged it to possess the equivalent strength of a moderate county team.Wynne-Thomas, p. 59. The MCC was criticised by the press both in England and in South Africa for omitting many of the strongest players.Burns, Chapter 3, Location 392. As the youngest member of the team, Crawford was given the traditional role of writing press reports to be sent back home during the tour.Burns, Chapter 3, Location 398. When the team played in Worcester during the tour, the local press carried a report that Crawford planned to remain in South Africa. The 1906 Wisden carried the same story;Burns, Chapter 3, Location 446. in a comment on his success in 1905, it suggested that it was uncertain for how long he would play, and questioned whether, if he played Test cricket, he would do so for England or South Africa. The cricket historian Nigel Hart queries why Wisden mentioned South Africa; Crawford's only known connection came through his uncle, who had left South Africa five years before.Hart, p. 6.

In all first-class matches on the tour, Crawford scored 531 runs at an average of 31.23, coming third in the tour batting averages, and took 34 wickets at an average of 18.44, placing him fifth among the regular bowlers in the team. In the early tour matches, Crawford recorded two five-wicket hauls and scored 98. He made his Test match debut for England against South Africa in the first Test at the age of 19 years and 32 days to become England's youngest Test cricketer, a record he held until Brian Close made his debut in 1949.Hart, p. 7. Batting at number six, Crawford scored 44 runs in the first innings and 43 in the second; he took a wicket with his first delivery, bowling Bert Vogler.Burns, Chapter 3, Location 496. He was wicketless in the second innings, and bowled inaccurately as the home team recorded a one-wicket win.Burns, Chapter 3, Location 503. Wisden noted that Crawford batted well in both innings. After a month of cricket in between the Tests, during which Crawford scored 212 in a minor game, the English team were suffering from fatigue when the remaining matches were played. In the second Test, Crawford was promoted to open the batting, a position he retained for most of the series. In the final match, he scored 74, his first Test fifty and the highest score of his Test career. His best bowling also came in the final match, where he took three for 69.

In the Test series, Crawford scored 281 runs at an average of 31.22 and took nine wickets at 35.77. England lost the series 4–1, finding it difficult to bat against the South African googly bowlers. Wisden's tour report described Crawford's batting as one of the few positives for his team. Writing home during the tour, the MCC captain Pelham Warner frequently praised Crawford and the extent of his ability at a young age. The English press even parodied what Crawford's biographer, Michael Burns, describes as Warner's "near-obsession" with Crawford.Burns, Chapter 3, Location 516. Other critics believed that Crawford should have been more successful as a bowler but was distracted by the matting surfaces used in South Africa; because he was able to make the ball bounce and turn extravagantly from the surface, he tried to spin the ball too much and lost accuracy as a result.Burns, Chapter 3, Location 605.

Surrey cricketer

Returning to England for the 1906 season, Crawford completed the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in first-class cricket, the youngest player at the time to accomplish this feat. Against Gloucestershire, he scored 148 and then took seven for 85 and four for 63 with the ball; he also took ten wickets in his next game. In total, he compiled 1,174 runs at an average of 30.10, and took 118 wickets at an average of 20.28. These performances earned him selection for the representative Gentlemen versus Players matches at both Lord's and The Oval, in which he played for the amateur Gentlemen. At the end of the season, he was chosen as one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year. The citation said: "Few cricketers have won equal fame at so early an age", and noted the unusual ease with which he had moved into first-class cricket. Crawford's powerful batting and straight hitting were praised, as was his accurate bowling. The report also stated: "That he should have done all this is the more astonishing from the fact that he invariably plays in glasses. No one handicapped in this way has ever been so consistently successful both as batsman and bowler."