Roly Thompson

Roland George Thompson (26 September 1932 – 16 May 2003), generally known as "Roly Thompson", was an English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Warwickshire between 1949 and 1962. He was a right-handed tail-end batsman and a right-arm fast-medium bowler. He was born at Binley, Coventry and died at Coventry.

Thompson made his debut in first-class cricket as a 16-year-old in 1949 and the following year created something of a stir by taking five Gloucestershire wickets – the top five in the batting order, including Test players Jack Crapp and Tom Graveney – for just 16 runs in a County Championship match. In 1951, he played half a dozen games and improved his best bowling analysis in the match against Leicestershire with six wickets for 63 runs. From 1952, he was on National Service in the Royal Air Force for two years, but in the first of those seasons he played a few games for Warwickshire and against Nottinghamshire, still aged only 19, he took nine first-innings wickets for 65 runs, which were the best innings figures of his career.

Following discharge in 1954, Thompson returned to Warwickshire and was a full-time professional cricketer for the next eight seasons. Yet injury, variable form and fickle selection policies meant that in only four of those eight seasons could he be regarded as a regular first-team player, a fact much commented on in his obituary in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. His contemporary and fellow opening bowler Jack Bannister was quoted as saying that Warwickshire "did him no favours" by preferring short-term imported players "just at a time when an extended run in the first team would have benefited club and player".