Michael Harbottle

Brigadier Michael Neale Harbottle, OBE (7 February 1917 – 30 April 1997) was a senior British Army officer who was chief of staff of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus from 1966 to 1968, a peace campaigner and amateur cricketer. Early life Harbottle was born in Littlehampton, Sussex, and educated at Marlborough College from 1930 to 1935. He was rejected by the Navy because he suffered from bunions but he was accepted by the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, where he studied from 1935 to 1937. He was commissioned into the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in 1937. Cricket career Harbottle was a left-handed batsman who bowled slow left-arm orthodox. He was a talented player at Marlborough, and captained the Sandhurst XI. He played a first-class cricket match for the Army in 1937 against Oxford University. He had considerable success in the match, scoring 156 runs in his only first-class innings, before being dismissed by Desmond Eagar. He also played for Dorset at a Minor counties level from 1937 to 1956, although infrequently due to his military commitments. He played cricket for the army until 1959 and captained the team in that year.