Alec Kennedy
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| Batting style | Right-hand bat | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bowling style | Right-arm medium | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Alexander Stuart "Alec" Kennedy (24 January 1891, Edinburgh, Scotland – 15 November 1959, Southampton, England) was a Hampshire cricketer and one of the ten highest wicket-takers in first-class cricket (usually ranked seventh after Rhodes, Freeman, Parker, J.T. Hearne, Goddard, and W.G. Grace).
Kennedy was a right-arm medium-pace bowler with an unusually long run-up for his time, but his easy and efficient body action was considered a model for aspiring young cricketers. His arm action was viewed as suspicious by some observers, but unlike Arthur Mold hindsight has not condemned Kennedy, although he is considered fortunate to have played during a period when only a single bowler in county cricket was ever no-balled for throwing. On a sticky wicket Kennedy could spin the ball sharply either way, and at times was unplayable, as when he took seven for 8 against Warwickshire at Portsmouth in 1927.
When Kennedy first played for Hampshire he was only sixteen. The county had not had a top-line professional bowler since Tom Soar and Henry Baldwin declined at the turn of the century. He played only irregularly up to 1910, but in 1912 became the third highest wicket-taker in county cricket, with 112 wickets at an average of 17. After injury in 1913, Kennedy rebounded to take 164 wickets, average 20, in 1914. In 1919 he took seven for 47 against Surrey at the Oval – one of only three games Surrey lost at The Oval between the end of World War I and 1927.
Kennedy never generated enough pace off the pitch to trouble the highest quality opposition on good pitches. His failure against the Australians in 1921 was taken to show conclusively that he would have been as ineffective as most English spinners on hard, flat Australian pitches. Even when English bowling was at its weakest Kennedy was never in contention for an Ashes tour.
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