George Geary
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| Batting style | Right-handed batsman (RHB) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bowling style | Right arm fast medium (RFM) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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George Geary (9 July 1893 in Barwell, Leicestershire, England – 6 March 1981 in Leicester, England) was the greatest cricketer Leicestershire produced before the advent of David Gower and one of the best and hardest-working bowlers of the inter-war period.
Above medium pace and right-handed, Geary was able to swing the new ball very effectively but relied for most of his success on his amazing persistence and ability to bowl with slight yet well-disguised variations of pace and cut. He was able to bowl quite incredible numbers of overs on unresponsive pitches, as shown in the last Test of the 1928/1929 Ashes tour, when he bowled an amazing 81 overs on a typical billiard-table Australian wicket in very hot weather. Because he was tall and very solidly built, he was able both to get bounce and to bowl the long spells required for success in Australian conditions which destroyed the reputations of all English bowlers of slighter build.
Geary was also a capable lower order batsman who usually relied upon hitting, but could get runs with a quiet, if unstylish determination when they were desperately needed. Though he never scored a thousand runs - his best aggregates were 923 in 1929 and 900 in 1925 - his runs were frequently of great value to a county that never possessed any of the exceptionally high-class batsmen other counties could command in Geary's heyday. Owing to his considerable height and reach, Geary was an excellent slip catcher and, despite all the bowling he had to do, almost always his county's leading fielder.
For all his impressive build and strength, and his shrewd skill, George Geary proved a quite nervous starter in the cricket world. He played a few times for Leicestershire in 1912, and in 1913 established himself as the leading bowler of what became a very weak bowling side in good weather owing to the tragic illness of Tom Jayes. The last year before the First World War saw Geary come right to the front with 114 wickets for just over 20 runs apiece, far ahead of any other bowler in the team.
While serving in the air force during the war, Geary was unlucky to have his leg cut by an aeroplane propeller and this affected, at least temporarily, his great strength and powerful build. After a very disappointing season in 1919 in which his wickets cost over 34 runs each, Geary did not play a single first-class game in 1920 - preferring the financial incentives of a Lancashire League professional job. He played a few times in midweek games in 1921, and was so successful that he took 23 wickets on unresponsive pitches and decided to commit himself to Leicestershire again.
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