John Frazer

John Ewan Frazer (2 April 1901 – 2 January 1927) played first-class cricket for Somerset, Sussex and Oxford University between 1921 and 1924. He was born at Sydney, Australia and died following a ski-ing accident at Davos, Switzerland. Background and education The son of an Australian doctor who took his medical degree at Oxford University and then settled at East Grinstead, Sussex, Frazer was educated at Winchester College where he was an all-round sportsman. As a cricketer he was a left-handed middle-order or opening batsman and a left-arm fast-medium bowler; however, his bowling "mysteriously deserted him – possibly a result of gymnastics", according to his obituary, written by his Winchester contemporary Douglas Jardine in the 1928 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, and he did not bowl in first-class cricket. Cricket and soccer at Oxford Frazer won an exhibition scholarship to read natural sciences at Balliol College, Oxford; he stayed at Oxford for four years from 1920 to 1924, completing his degree in three years and gaining a first-class honours, and then staying on to do chemistry research for a further year. His sporting record at Oxford was patchy. He played in the two non-first-class trial matches at the start of the 1921 season, but was not selected for the first-class team, instead making his first-class debut against the university side for Somerset: this was not an unusual arrangement for Somerset's matches with the universities in the first third of the 20th century, giving the county the chance to try new players (and also filling gaps in its largely amateur team) and allowing the university cricket club the opportunity to see potential players of its own. In the single match that Frazer played for Somerset, scoring 4 and 14, a second Oxford freshman (and chemist), Guy Blaikie, also played for the county side; unlike Frazer, Blaikie returned to Somerset for further matches in subsequent seasons. Frazer did not play for Oxford that summer or the next, instead turning out for Sussex, for whom he was qualified by residence, in a couple of County Championship matches in 1921, and a further five games in 1922. He had no great success in these matches, with a highest score of just 40, made in the match against Warwickshire at Hove in 1922.