A Professional Pair: Alec Kennedy, Jack Newman and the Hampshire Revival

Martin Chandler | 9:10am BST 03 May 2026

Published: 2026
Pages: 32
Author: Allen, David
Publisher: Hampshire Cricket Heritage
Rating: 3.5 stars

The title of this, the latest title from Hampshire Cricket Heritage, identifies two men who made an enormous contribution to the county’s cricket, yet whose names are seldom mentioned today and who writers have never paid as much attention to as their records suggest ought to have been the case.

By and large the pair were contemporaries. Newman was Kennedy’s senior by seven years, but their career spans were similar, Kennedy’s regular presence in the side covering the years 1909-1934 and Newman’s 1907-1930. Both were all-rounders and, with 2,874, Kennedy is the sixth highest wicket taker of all time. Newman is 25 places below Kennedy, but still took 2,054 wickets, and that in 48,000 fewer deliveries.

Test caps did come Kennedy’s way, a man who was born in Scotland but by upbringing seems to have been as much a Hampshire man as Newman. He toured South Africa in 1922/23, but the five Tests of that series were the only ones in which he appeared for England. He achieved little with the bat but 31 wickets at 19.23 suggest he would not have been out of place in a team against Australia but, unfortunately for him, he was in competition with the likes of George Geary and Maurice Tate.

The pair would frequently opening the Hampshire bowling together, and their bowling unchanged throughout innings was far from unknown, yet neither were particularly quick. An analysis of their bowling type with reference to contemporary reports and the observations of men like John Arlott and Harry Altham is one of the features of this long overdue look at the lives and careers of the two men.

The monograph follows much the sort of format as the reader would expect. The backgrounds of both men are examined, their playing styles and then, for the duration of their long careers, there is a season by season look at Hampshire’s achievements and their contributions to those.

Clearly over the course of 32 pages a full biography of two men with such long careers is impossible, and there are reasons why none has ever appeared. Kennedy and Newman were professional cricketers who did their job very well. In the winters they frequently coached overseas.

And what became of the pair after their playing careers? Newman was a First Class umpire until the outbreak of war, but there is nothing of that career in the monograph or what happened to him in the time that passed between September 1939 and his death in 1973. Of Kennedy’s life until his much earlier death in 1959 there is nothing.

From other sources I am aware that both men relocated to South Africa, where Newman spent the rest of his life. Kennedy on the other hand did return to Southampton in the 1950s where he ran a tobacconist. But in relative terms both men’s lives outside the game seem to have been uneventful, leaving little for a biographer to unearth.

Anyone who reads A Professional Pair will be left with a tinge of regret that no contemporary writer chose to write up the lives of Kennedy and Newman when there were people still around who knew them well. Newman in particular must have been an interesting character given one occasion that Dave Allen is able to report, when he was sent from the field by his captain, Lionel Tennyson.

But at least we do now have something on the subject of the lives of two cricketers who are certainly important figures in the history of their county, and whose statistics guarantee they will always figure in the record books.

There are 200 signed and numbered copies of A Professional Pair available either directly from Hampshire Cricket Heritage (email hantscccheritage@gmail.com) or, in Australia, from Roger Page.