Dudley Nourse
Encyclopedia
Arthur Dudley Nourse was a South African Test
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 cricketer and batsman

The son of batsman Arthur (Dave) Nourse
Dave Nourse
Arthur William "Dave" Nourse, born at Croydon, England on 26 January 1878 and died at Port Elizabeth, South Africa on 8 July 1948, was a cricketer who played for Natal, Transvaal, Western Province and South Africa....

, Nourse played 34 Test matches in a long career of sixteen years. At the time of his retirement, he held the highest batting average
Batting average
Batting average is a statistic in both cricket and baseball that measures the performance of cricket batsmen and baseball hitters. The two statistics are related in that baseball averages are directly descended from the concept of cricket averages.- Cricket :...

 of any South African batsman (currently surpassed only by Jacques Kallis
Jacques Kallis
Jacques Henry Kallis is a South African cricketer. As an all-rounder he is a formidable right-handed batsman and fast-medium swingbowler. He is one of the greatest all-rounders of all time, being the only cricketer in the history of the game to hold more than 12,000 runs and 250 wickets in both...

 and Graeme Pollock
Graeme Pollock
Robert Graeme Pollock, known as Graeme, is a former cricketer. He played in 23 Test matches for South Africa and represented Transvaal and Eastern Province at domestic level....

).

Nourse also captained his country in fifteen matches, and it was as captain that he played what Cricinfo describes as "his most renowned innings". Against England in 1951 he batted with a broken thumb, but scored 208 to win South Africa the game. Nourse retired from cricket after that series.

Nourse was named after William Ward, 2nd Earl of Dudley
William Ward, 2nd Earl of Dudley
William Humble Ward, 2nd Earl of Dudley, KP, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, KStJ, PC, TD, DL , styled Viscount Ednam before 1885, was a British Conservative politician...

 who was the Governor-General of Australia
Governor-General of Australia
The Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia is the representative in Australia at federal/national level of the Australian monarch . He or she exercises the supreme executive power of the Commonwealth...

. He was born a few days after Dave Nourse scored a double hundred against South Australia where was touring with the South African team. When Earl Dudley heard about the innings and the baby, he expressed the wish that he be named after him.
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