Frank Edward Woolley (27 May 1887 – 18 October 1978) was an English professional cricketer who played for Kent County Cricket Club between 1906 and 1938 and represented the England cricket team. A genuine all-rounder, Woolley was a left-handed batsman and a left-arm bowler. He was also an outstanding close-in fielder and remains the only non-wicket-keeper to have taken more than 1,000 catches in a first-class career. His aggregate of runs scored is the second-highest in first-class cricket history, while his total number of wickets places him 28th overall.
Woolley played 64 Test matches for England between 1909 and 1934 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest all-rounders in the history of the sport. He was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1911 and was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009.
Early life
Woolley was born in Tonbridge, Kent, in 1887, the youngest of four brothers. His father, Charles Woolley, owned a bicycle workshop on the town's High Street; the family lived above the workshop and it was here that Woolley was born. Charles later combined this business with a dyeing operation inherited from his father, although he had originally trained as an engineer at a railway works in Ashford, where he met and married his wife, Louise Lewis, the daughter of the work's owner. In 1899, the ground became the base for the Tonbridge Nursery, a training centre established to develop young professional cricketers for Kent. Players trained at the Nursery formed the core of Kent's four County Championship-winning teams during the early years of Woolley's career.
Woolley developed an interest in cricket at an early age. He played informally with his brothers behind his father's workshop and watched matches at the Angel Ground from a tree overlooking the field. He was also a keen association footballer, playing for Tonbridge and later signing for Tunbridge Wells Rangers F.C. in 1906. and was later invited to play in a match to make up numbers by Tom Pawley, Kent's manager.
Woolley quickly impressed McCanlis and the other Nursery coaches. Woolley played for a variety of teams during the season, scoring 960 runs and taking 115 wickets. Blythe, who had been Woolley's childhood hero,
Cricket career
thumb|right|Woolley pictured in 1912.
After a single Second XI appearance in May 1906, a match in which he played alongside his brother Claud, Woolley was selected for Kent's First XI for the County Championship match against Lancashire at Old Trafford, replacing Blythe who had injured his hand while fielding.
In Kent's second innings, however, Woolley scored 64 runs and he retained his place in the team for most of the remainder of the season. He missed only the matches played during Canterbury Cricket Week, a major social event at which amateur players were more likely to be available for selection. He had played 16 matches, scored 779 runs and took 42 wickets. It was to be the only time he did not score at least 1,000 runs in a season in his career. His total of 58,959 runs is the second highest of all time in first-class matches, beaten only by Jack Hobbs,
As a bowler, Woolley was most effective before a knee injury in 1924–25. He took 132 five-wicket hauls and claimed 10 wickets in a match 28 times. as a fielder are the most taken by any non-wicket-keeper.
In total Woolley played in 978 first-class matches, including a record 764 for Kent, in a career that lasted until 1938. He retired aged 51, scoring 1,590 runs in his final season. He was inducted into the Federation of International Cricketers' Associations Hall of Fame in 2000 and made an inaugural member of the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame when it was established in 2009.
Style and technique
Writing for Barclay's World of Cricket, Harry Altham described Woolley as a "tall and graceful" figure who, with "a quiet air" was "unhurried in his movements". As a batsman, he had a gift for timing his shots and made full use of his long reach; he was especially strong in driving off his back foot against balls that other batsmen might consider good-length deliveries. He was equally graceful as a bowler, making full use of his height to extract additional bounce from his deliveries. Altham pointed out that, although Woolley lacked the subtlety of Wilfred Rhodes, he was nevertheless a formidable bowler on any pitch whose conditions helped him. and wrote that no other cricketer alive "had served the meadow game as happily and faithfully as Woolley", whilst in his obituary in The Daily Telegraph, EW Swanton described him as "as graceful a batsman as ever played".
According to R. C. Robertson-Glasgow "when you wrote about him, there weren't enough words. In describing a great innings by Woolley, and few of them were not great in artistry, you had to be careful with your adjectives and stack them in little rows, like pats of butter or razor-blades. In the first over of his innings, perhaps, there had been an exquisite off-drive, followed by a perfect cut, then an effortless leg-glide. In the second over the same sort of thing happened; and your superlatives had already gone. The best thing to do was to presume that your readers knew how Frank Woolley batted and use no adjectives at all." He went on: "there was all summer in a stroke by Woolley, and he batted as it is sometimes shown in dreams." In his Wisden obituary, R. L. Arrowsmith wrote "his average rate of scoring has been exceeded only by Jessop and equalled by Trumper. His philosophy was to dominate the bowler. 'When I am batting,' he said, 'I am the attack'."
Wartime service
thumb|right|[[HMS King George V (1911)|HMS King George V at anchor on the Firth of Forth in 1917. Woolley was attached to the ship in 1918 at North Queensferry.]]
After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the English cricket season continued, although public interest declined and the social aspects of the game were reduced. Woolley married in September 1914, shortly after the outbreak of war. His three brothers all joined the Kent Fortress Royal Engineers in 1914, but when Woolley attempted to join them he failed his medical examination.