Dennis Silk
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Dennis Raoul Whitehall Silk | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born |
8 October 1931 Eureka, California, USA |
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| Batting style | Right-handed | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Role | Batsman | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Domestic team information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Years | Team | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1952–1955 | Cambridge University | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1956–1960 | Somerset | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Career statistics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Source: Cricket Archive, 15 June 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dennis Raoul Whitehall Silk CBE (born 8 October 1931) is a former schoolmaster and international cricketer. He was also a close friend of the poet Siegfried Sassoon, about whom he has spoken and written extensively.
Silk was born in Eureka, California. He was educated at Christ's Hospital, and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he gained an MA in History and represented Cambridge University at cricket. A useful opener or middle-order batsman, he scored centuries in the matches against Oxford University in 1953 and 1954, and captained Cambridge University in 1955. He went on to play first-class cricket for Somerset as an amateur during the school summer holidays, but gave priority to his teaching career.
He toured East Africa with the MCC in 1957–58, and captained the MCC on tours to South America in 1958–59 and to the USA and Canada in 1959 and 1967, none of which included first-class matches. He also captained a strong MCC team on a tour of New Zealand in 1960–61, which included 10 first-class matches, three of them against the full-strength New Zealand team. After the New Zealand tour he retired from first-class cricket.
His highest first-class score was 126 for Cambridge University against the MCC in 1953. He very seldom bowled his leg-breaks, and his single first-class wicket came in his second-last match, when he bowled Gerry Alexander in the MCC match against the Governor-General's XI in Auckland.
He later wrote two instructional books on playing cricket.
Having taught at Marlborough College, Silk moved on to Radley College, where he was Warden (headmaster) from 1968 to 1991. In this role he appeared prominently in the 1980 BBC documentary series, Public School. Eric Anderson, head master of Eton from 1980 to 1994, regarded Silk as the best headmaster in England, who transformed Radley from "a pretty ordinary place" to one of England's top schools.
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