33 Facts About Tom Graveney

Thomas William Graveney was an English first-class cricketer, representing his country in 79 Test matches and scoring over 4,800 runs.

Tom Graveney played for Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, and helped Worcestershire win the county championship for the first time in their history.

Tom Graveney was banned for three matches, and was never selected for England again.

Tom Graveney was one of the first 55 players inducted to the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009.

Tom Graveney was born on 16 June 1927 in the village of Riding Mill, near Hexham, Northumberland, one of five children born to Jack and Mary Tom Graveney.

Tom Graveney's father worked for the armaments manufacturer Vickers Armstrong in Newcastle-upon-Tyne as an engineer.

Tom Graveney started work as an accountant, leaving after a few days to join the Army in 1946, as his elder brother Ken had done.

Tom Graveney served in Suez with the Gloucestershire Regiment as a second lieutenant in 1946, and was later promoted to the rank of captain in the sports depot.

Tom Graveney played his first first-class match for Gloucestershire against Oxford University Cricket Club in April 1948 but failed to score, and did not become a regular member of the side until later in the season.

Tom Graveney scored his first Test century on this tour, taking eight hours to score 175 runs in the second Test in Bombay.

Tom Graveney's attacking style as a batsman did not find favour with Hutton, the captain, who "did not want flowery batsmen but fighters" in the attempt to regain the Ashes from Australia.

Early the next morning, Tom Graveney was dismissed by the refreshed Australian bowling attack without adding to his overnight score of 78.

Tom Graveney was named one of Wisden's five Cricketers of the Year for 1953.

Tom Graveney had been dropped for two matches earlier in the series after being dismissed for 0 when playing an aggressive shot when the match situation called for caution.

One Australian journalist, the former cricket Jack Fingleton, said afterwards that he did not think that Tom Graveney's "smiling nature fits in with the seriousness of Test cricket".

Tom Graveney was appointed captain of Gloucestershire in 1959, but was not suited to the job.

Discontent with his captaincy led the county to replace him after the end of the 1960 season with Tom Graveney Pugh, a less talented batsmen who was "a young and inexperienced amateur who was barely worth his place in the side".

Tom Graveney left Gloucestershire on discovering that it had been decided when giving the captaincy to Tom Graveney that Pugh would be his successor.

Tom Graveney helped Worcestershire win the county championship in 1964 and 1965, the first time that they had done so, and reached the landmark of one hundred first-class centuries in 1964.

Tom Graveney was awarded the OBE in 1968, described by one writer as a "rare distinction" for someone still playing.

Tom Graveney was banned for three matches as a result, as the chairman of the selectors Alec Bedser stated that he had told Graveney before the Test match not to play in the Sunday game.

Tom Graveney said that he had told Bedser before being chosen for the Test match that he was committed to the Luton game, but to no avail.

Tom Graveney continued to play for Worcestershire, captaining the side from 1968 to 1970, and had the second-highest batting average in the 1970 season.

Tom Graveney did play one magnificent innings though, in a semi final of the one day knockout competition at Adelaide Oval, where he scored 98 off of 112 balls to lead the unheralded Queensland side to an unlikely victory against a very strong South Australian side which featured 8 current or future test players.

Against an attack that featured Freeman, Hammond, Greg Chappell, Mallet and Jenner, Tom Graveney gave a superlative display of cover driving with exquisite timing that sent the crowd and local media into raptures.

Tom Graveney scored 47,793 first-class runs, making 122 centuries.

Tom Graveney is the only player to have scored more than 10,000 runs for two counties.

Tom Graveney was described by The Daily Telegraph as "the greatest, as well as the most elegant and graceful, professional batsman to emerge in Britain in the years after the Second World War", and as "a throwback to cricket's golden age" with his attacking power and technique.

Tom Graveney served as president of Worcestershire from 1994 to 1998.

Tom Graveney was one of the first 55 people to be enrolled in the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009.

Tom Graveney continued to play golf, playing off a single-figure handicap, and building up a large collection of stamps, a hobby that he had begun when touring overseas.

Jackie, whom he married in 1952, developed Alzheimer's disease in later life and Tom Graveney moved into a care home to be with her until her death in 2013.

Tom Graveney died on 3 November 2015, aged 88, in the week after his brother Ken's death.