Eddie Leadbeater
Encyclopedia
Edric "Eddie" Leadbeater (15 August 1927 – 17 April 2011) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er who played in two Tests
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...

 in 1951. He was born in Lockwood, Huddersfield
Lockwood, Huddersfield
Lockwood is an area of Huddersfield, in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England. It is to the southwest of Huddersfield Town Centre, to the west of the River Holme....

, West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....

, and died in Huddersfield
Huddersfield
Huddersfield is a large market town within the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England, situated halfway between Leeds and Manchester. It lies north of London, and south of Bradford, the nearest city....

.

Leadbeater was a right-handed lower order batsman, and a leg-break and googly bowler, who had a couple of good seasons for Yorkshire
Yorkshire County Cricket Club
Yorkshire County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Yorkshire as one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure....

 in 1950 and 1951, but failed to keep his place in the side. He reappeared for Warwickshire County Cricket Club
Warwickshire County Cricket Club
Warwickshire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Warwickshire. Its limited overs team is called the Warwickshire Bears. Their kit colours are black and gold and the shirt sponsor...

 in 1957 and 1958, as a possible replacement for Eric Hollies
Eric Hollies
William Eric Hollies was an English cricketer, who is mainly remembered for taking the wicket of Donald Bradman for a duck in Bradman's final Test match innings, in which only four was needed for a Test average of 100...

, who retired after the 1957 season; but he failed to take enough wickets and his contract was not renewed.

Leadbeater's leg-spin was always inclined to be expensive: in his two good seasons for Yorkshire, his wickets cost an average of around 25 runs apiece. His selection to replace Derbyshire's
Derbyshire County Cricket Club
Derbyshire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the England and Wales domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Derbyshire...

 injured Bert Rhodes on the 1951-52 MCC
Marylebone Cricket Club
Marylebone Cricket Club is a cricket club in London founded in 1787. Its influence and longevity now witness it as a private members' club dedicated to the development of cricket. It owns, and is based at, Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood, London NW8. MCC was formerly the governing body of...

 tour of India, Pakistan and Ceylon
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

 was unexpected, and though he played in two Test matches, he was not a success. Cricket writer, Colin Bateman, noted "Leadbeater was more of an accurate roller, than a traditional leg spinner and his bowling posed few terrors for the Indian batsmen". Wisden Cricketer's Almanack reported that he modified his action to avoid being too expensive on the tour: however, he was never the same bowler again, and the rest of his first-class career produced fewer than 100 wickets.

Dropping out of the Yorkshire side, he joined Warwickshire for 1957 and played fairly regularly in 1958 after Hollies retired. Though he took just 49 wickets (and only 25 of them in Championship matches), he scored his only first-class century in what proved to be his last season: going in as a nightwatchman
Nightwatchman (cricket)
In the sport of cricket, a nightwatchman is a lower-order batsman who comes in to bat higher up the order than usual near the end of the day's play...

, he made 116 and shared in a second-wicket stand of 209 with Fred Gardner
Fred Gardner (cricketer)
Fred Charles Gardner was an English cricketer and footballer. He was a right-hand opening batsman who played for Warwickshire.-Football career:...

 in the match against Glamorgan
Glamorgan County Cricket Club
Glamorgan County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Glamorgan aka Glamorganshire . Glamorgan CCC is the only Welsh first-class cricket club. Glamorgan CCC have won the English County...

 at Coventry.

Leadbeater is a rarity as an England Test cricketer, in that he was never awarded a county cap.
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