Nummy Deane

Nummy Deane

Nummy Deane (right) with Jack White in 1929
Personal information
Full name	Hubert Gouvaine Deane
Born	(1895-07-21)21 July 1895 Eshowe, Zululand
Died	21 October 1939(1939-10-21) (aged 44) Johannesburg, Transvaal, Union of South Africa
Batting style	Right-hand bat
Bowling style	–
International information
National side	South African
Career statistics
Competition Tests First-class Matches 17 100 Runs scored 628 3795 Batting average 25.12 30.11 100s/50s 0/3 6/18 Top score 93 165 Balls bowled – 130 Wickets – 3 Bowling average – 33.00 5 wickets in innings – 0 10 wickets in match – 0 Best bowling – 3/23 Catches/stumpings 8/- 63/-
Source: Cricinfo

Hubert Gouvaine "Nummy" Deane (21 July 1895 – 21 October 1939) was a South African cricketer who played in 17 Tests from 1924 to 1931. All of his Tests were against England and he captained his country in 12 of them.

Born in Eshowe, Zululand, Deane was a right-handed middle-order batsman whose domestic cricket in South Africa was for Natal from 1919–20 to 1922–23 and then for Transvaal from 1923–24 to 1929–30. In his very first first-class match, for Natal against the Australian Imperial Forces team that played in the UK, South Africa and Australia after the end of the First World War, he took three wickets for 23 runs; these, however, remained his only first-class wickets and his bowling style is not known.

He had limited impact for Natal as a batsman and in 10 matches over four seasons his highest score for the side was 96, made against Transvaal in 1921–22. In his very first game for Transvaal in 1923–24, however, he made 165 out of 246 made while he was at the wicket against the weak Orange Free State team. This score would be the highest of his career and led to his selection for the 1924 South African team in England.

The 1924 South Africans lost the Test series to England by three matches to nil, with two draws, with the weakness of the bowling singled out by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in its review of the tour as a prime cause for failure. Deane himself merited not a single mention in the four-page Wisden article describing the highlights of the tour, and his tour figures indicate that he was rarely prominent: in 25 first-class matches, he passed 50 only once, and his 621 runs came at an average of 22.18. The one half-century was a not-out innings of 80 in a match against Scotland in which the South Africans comprehensively outplayed their hosts. Despite this modest record, Deane was picked as a specialist batsman for all five Test matches and in a team in which only Bob Catterall and, to a lesser degree, Fred Susskind made many runs, he did as much as most of his team-mates, scoring 143 runs at an average of 23.83. Mostly he batted in lower middle order at No 7, and his best score came in the third Test when he reverted to that position for the second innings, having opened the batting in the first innings, and made an unbeaten 47 that forced England to bat again after South Africa had followed on 264 runs behind on the first innings.