Jack(John) Hyams
Jack Hyams celebrated his 90th birthday in December 2009. Remarkably included in the celebrations was a weekend cricket tour to Spain to play at the Woodbridge Oval Albir L'Alfas Del Pi against Sporting Alfas CC and a testing net at Ashmole Secondary School indoor sports hall with members of the Bertie Joel Net. Many Nomads partook of both events.
Jack at 90 prepares to bat November 2009
At 80 with Wakers, Alfas At 77 with Whiteway & Prof White, Saumur AT 90+ Alfas 2010
Jack Hyams has played for Cockfosters, Finchley, Mill Hill, Cross Arrows, West Bromwich Dartmouth, Forty Club, Club Cricket Conference, Bunburrys, Stoics, Nomads, Cricket World XI, Bertie Joel's XI, Cheshunt Thursday, Billericay Veterans, Magdala, Ibiza, MCC..........
He has scored more runs than anyone else in the history of the game nearly 130,000.
Press Release London November 2010
Jack Hyams, club cricketer extraordinaire, celebrates his impending 90th birthday(December 18th) with two cricket matches this coming weekend at the Clive Woodbridge Oval, Albir L'Alfas Del Pi, Valencia Spain,(http://sacc.hitscricket.com/) on Saturday for the Jack Hyams Cup and on Sunday a 'Friendly'. Jack has played ten matches so far this year for Billericay CC Veterans. Overnight he dances the night away in gaudy Benidorm,all night too!
On December 12th he joins the Bertie Joel Indoor net for some indoor refinement of his stroke play at the north London Ashmole Secondary School indoor sports centre and lunch afterwards. Jack joined the late Bertie Joel's net in the late 50s
Jack Hyams has scored more runs in club cricket than anyone else in the history of cricket,over 130,000 runs with 171 centuries. He has played in India,Caribbean,South Africa,Australia and New Zealand as well a host of European countries. Three years ago Jack played five matches on the trot for Nomads CC on tour in Spain when that club was short of players.
No player in the history of the game has played so many matches, let alone hit so many runs. No one has scored so many centuries after the age of 60.
Jack has played for the club Cricket Conference, Cockfosters CC, West Bromwich Dartmouth CC, Finchley CC and Mill Hill CC. His is a member of MCC, Cross Arrows CC, Stoics CC, Forty Club and Nomads CC. He was an MCC Senior Coach. He is an ACU & S qualified umpire
Jack is Life President of the Barmy Army.
Further bio details
Jack's mother was French, her father was Paris editor of the American paper Herald Tribune and skipper of the paper's cricket club which competed in the extensive Paris cricket league before WW1. Jack's father was for many years a member of Fred Karno's circus with the stage name of Sinclair. When Karno received an invitation from the fledgling film industry in US, he was sceptical of the moving pictures so sent the unmarried men to America..Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel etc.The marrieds stayed at home and Jack's father left the stage for business. Chaplin visited the Hyams home on visits to uk and met the young J Hyams.
Jack Hyams was offered professional cricket and football terms but when he told his father how much was the wage his father forbade him following a sports career saying I will pay you double and you can give half to your mother.
In WW2 Jack was an aircraft gunner. Of the 17 who joined up with Jack all of them were dead within one year. Jack spent one year as a gunner in aircraft protecting the North Atlantic convoys. Having unusually survived as such a gunner he then spent the rest of WW2 as a PE instructor probably laying the basis for his life long fitness.
After WW2 Jack played professional football for Bradford Park Avenue under the pseudonym of Sinclair his father's stage name playing in that lowly club's giant killing defeat of Arsenal in the FA Cup.
Sadly having played some ten games in 2010 Jack suffered a major stroke. He was back home and fighting to regain his fitness and speach but is now in a Care Home-(Eastham Care Home in South Woodham Ferrers). .(May 2111)
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