Joe Hardstaff Jr

Joseph Hardstaff Jr (3 July 1911 – 1 January 1990) was an English cricketer, who played in twenty three Test matches for England from 1935 to 1948. Hardstaff's father, Joe senior played for Nottinghamshire and England and his son, also named Joe, played first-class cricket as well.

Cricket correspondent Colin Bateman remarked, "Hardstaff was one of the most artistic batsmen ever to set foot on a cricket field but he paid the high price of falling out with Gubby Allen".

Life and career

Hardstaff was born in Nuncargate, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire.

One of the most elegant middle order batsman of the 1930s, a rich era for English batsmanship, Hardstaff first played for Nottinghamshire at the age of nineteen, and made his name with 1,817 runs in 1934, which led to his Test selection against South Africa the following year. He had a highly successful tour of Australia under Errol Holmes in 1935–36, scoring over a thousand runs in tour matches in his upright, elegant style, but proved less prolific in the Tests when he returned in 1936–37. The experience spurred him to further buttress his defensive technique and this, allied with his natural stroke play, led to a fine season at home in 1937, when he posted over 2,500 runs including three double hundreds. He won the Walter Lawrence trophy for the fastest century of the season, in scoring an unbeaten 117 in under an hour, to help defeat Kent in a frenetic run chase and was duly named one of Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1938. His form did not desert him in the Test matches, he scored 350 runs at 70 against New Zealand, and, after being overlooked for the first two tests in 1938, he stroked 169 at The Oval while Len Hutton broke the world record score. He was surprisingly omitted from the 1938/9 tour to South Africa, but averaged 50 in 1939 and played against the West Indies in the last Test series before World War II.

The war robbed him, like so many others, of perhaps his best cricketing years, and his Test appearances were sporadic when cricket resumed, despite a brilliant unbeaten double century against India in 1946.