Last person to play cricket with Bradman dies at 97

Hugh Dinwiddy, Kent’s oldest cricketer and the last person to have played first-class cricket with both Don Bradman and Jack Hobbs, has died at the age of 97. A right-hand batsman and leg-break/googly bowler, as well as a superb cover point, Dunwiddy’s career consisted of five matches for Cambridge University and ten for Kent, all coming between 1933 and 1935.
He was included in the Kent side in July 1933 after a double hundred for the 2nd XI against Devon, and in his second first-class game he scored a career-best 45 against Surrey at Blackheath. In that game Hobbs, who was 50 and in his penultimate season, scored a hundred. Dinwiddy later recalled that “Hobbs was very kind to me and wished me luck.”
The following season, in his second year at Cambridge, Dinwiddy broke into the XI for the match against the Australians in early May. Bradman, who had opened the tour with a double hundred at Worcester, made all the headlines when he was dismissed for a duck, but the Australians still closed the first day on 418 for 4. Dinwiddy made 0 and 2 as the students were routed by an innings and 163 runs. He described Bradman as “alright … he didn’t say much to me”.
His first-class career fizzled out in 1935 but he made more of a mark on the rugby field where he won Blues in 1934 and 1935 and was good enough to be given an England trial in 1936.