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Richard Hutton, the younger son of the great England batsman Sir Leonard
Hutton, was a medium-fast bowler and useful late-order batsman who lost
out to Tony Greig in the battle for the England all-rounders spot in
the early 1970s. Greig came out on top in a head-to-head battle on the
Rest of the World tour which replaced the cancelled South African tour
of Australia in 1971-2. Cricket surrounded Hutton all his life. His
brother toured East Africa with MCC while his uncle Frank Dennis was
another Yorkshire batsman, and he married the daughter of Somerset
captain Ben Brocklehurst, the man who became proprietor of The Cricketer
magazine. Two sons, Ben and Oliver, were on the Middlesex staff. Hutton
toured Pakistan with the England under 25 team lead by Mike Brearley in
1967, and made his debut under Raymond Illingworth in the Lord's Tests
against Pakistan in 1971.
He did not get to bat in the first innings,
and was sent in to open with Brian Luckurst in the second to give him
the chance to build an innings in a dead game. He scored 58 not out
after taking 2-36 in the Pakistan innings. He took 3-72 opening the
bowling with Peter Lever at Headingley. Against India at Lord's he
scored 20 in a typical Illingworth-era rearguard which took England from
71-5 to 304 all out. His two wickets were Viswanath and Engineer. He
scored 81 and put on 103 in just over an hour with Alan Knott at the
Oval and was left not out as Chandrasekhar bowled India to their first
series win in England. On the World tour he was an early victim of the
new fast bowling sensation Dennis Lillee, and lost his place to Peter
Pollock in the last three 'tests'. He took 2-32 and 2-43 in two
unofficial One Day Internationals in Perth. Hutton's batting average of
36.50 and bowling average of 28.55 suggest he was unfortunate not to
play more than his five Test matches. (Bob Harragan)
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