Charles Tarbox

Charles Victor Tarbox, sometimes known as "Percy"[1] (2 July 1891 – 15 June 1978) was an English cricketer who played over 200 first-class games for Worcestershire in the 1920s. He also played at minor counties level for Hertfordshire, and later still stood as a first-class umpire in both England and South Africa. Tarbox's career statistics were fairly modest, but as his obituary in Wisden noted, he frequently chipped in with a few useful runs or wickets, valuable commodities for the generally weak Worcestershire sides of the day.[1]

He achieved his best innings figures in his first season of 1921, in only the seventh match of his first-class career, when in June he claimed 7–55 against Somerset at Worcester.[2] A few weeks later, and against the same opponents, he achieved what was to prove his only ten-wicket match haul, picking up 4–126 and then 6–32 in a big Worcestershire victory at Taunton.[3] He ended 1921 with 629 runs at 17.97 and 47 wickets at 27.29.

Wisden said that Tarbox "never fulfilled the promise" of that first season.[1] However, he continued to put in useful performances and was generally a regular in the team. His most productive seasons with the ball were 1927 and 1928, when he took 81 and 79 wickets respectively.[4] As a batsman, the highlights were the only two centuries of his career: 103 not out against local rivals Warwickshire at Edgbaston in May 1925,[5] and 109 – in an innings in which the second highest score was 29 – against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge in July 1927.[6]

The 1929 season was a very poor one for Tarbox – he averaged under 12 with the bat and over 42 with the ball – and Worcestershire released him at the end of the summer.[1] That was the end of his first-class playing career, but he returned to his home county of Hertfordshire and played for them for several years in the Minor Counties Championship; for them he scored relatively few runs but took many wickets, including 6–13 against Berkshire in July 1931.[7]

After his last game for Hertfordshire in 1934, Tarbox became an umpire, and stood in over 150 English first-class games between 1936 and 1947. He then added another ten matches as an umpire in South Africa.[8]