At his death, Hugh Dinwiddy was the oldest former Kent cricketer and the last man alive to have played first-class cricket against both Sir Don Bradman and Sir Jack Hobbs, two of the five men named by Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack in 2000 as the best of the 20th century.
Hobbs was nearing the end of his great career when Surrey visited Blackheath to play Kent in 1933. His 101 in the first innings was the 196th of the 199 first-class hundreds he made, but Kent won comfortably, helped by a first-innings score of 45 made by Dinwiddy. It was the 20-year-old batsman’s second game for Kent, having caught the eye after making several half centuries for the Radley College old boys’ team and scores of 98 and 218, the latter against Devon, for Kent’s second XI. In addition to being a decent right-handed batsman he was a modest leg spinner and a brilliant fielder at cover point.
Hugh Pochin Dinwiddy made his debut for Cambridge University in 1934, his second year as an English student, against the touring Australians. Bradman was dismissed for a duck — the same score that Dinwiddy made — but the Australians still reached 418 for four by the close of the first day and went on to win by an innings, with Dinwiddy making a score of 2 with his second knock.
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Dinwiddy played only four more cricket matches for Cambridge, but won Blues for rugby union in 1934 and 1935, played for Harlequins and was good enough to be given an England trial in 1936. He taught English and rugby at Ampleforth College — the future Cardinal Basil Hume was a pupil — before serving with the Royal Navy during the war.
In 1956 he took up a post teaching literature at Makerere College in Kampala, Uganda, then affiliated to the University of London. Seven years later it became part of the University of East Africa and in 1970 became a university in its own right. Dinwiddy returned to England soon after.
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Dinwiddy played a significant role in the development of Makerere. He was Dean of College and Warden of Northcote Hall, one of the students’ halls of residence. Under his encouragement, the university gained a reputation for creative writing in English.
He keenly introduced his students to the works of T.S. Eliot. “No one can read Eliot’s poetry with understanding unless he is aware that he is listening to a voice, like music, speaking out of silence,” he wrote in a collection of essays to mark the poet’s 70th birthday. “The act of faith, then, which one makes before reading him to the young, is that everyone has been born with the gift of silence, and that, however obscured it may be by daily and habitual activism, it can be touched into receptivity by the grace of words.”
He continued to promote literature and African affairs back in England, conducting classes for Southampton and Sussex universities and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Among many academic papers, he published a book, Uganda’s Relations with Britain from 1971-76, in 1987. He is survived by his wife, Yvonne, and two sons.
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Hugh Dinwiddy, OBE, cricketer and teacher, was born on October 16, 1912. He died on October 31, 2009, aged 97