Name Bill Fairservice | Role Cricket Player | |
William John Fairservice (16 May 1881 – 26 June 1971) was an English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Kent between 1902 and 1921. He was a right-handed lower-order batsman and a right-arm medium-pace and off-break bowler. He was born at Nunhead in London and died at Canterbury, Kent.
His son, Colin Fairservice, played for Kent and Middlesex from 1929 to 1936.
Cricket career
Fairservice is recorded as playing for Kent's second eleven from 1901 in minor matches. He made his first-class debut in a couple of games in the 1902 season, taking five Marylebone Cricket Club wickets in his first game, but not managing to bowl in his second, which was ruined by rain. Returning to the team for the same MCC fixture in the 1903 season, he took seven wickets, including that of W. G. Grace, and this time he kept his place in the first team for most of the rest of the season, and in fact remained there for the next 19 years until he retired at the end of the 1921 season. His obituary in the 1972 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack noted that he was not a regular player until after the First World War. But he gained his county cap in 1903 and in fact played in never fewer than 16 matches in each season up to 1914.
Rarely a headline-maker, Fairservice contributed useful lower order runs and, often bowling as first change, he also took regular wickets throughout his career, backing up the more illustrious names in a Kent team that achieved, with four County Championship successes between 1906 and 1913, the best performances in its history.