Albert Rose-Innes

Albert Rose-Innes (16 February 1868 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa – 22 November 1946 in East London, South Africa), was a South African cricketer. His first-class cricket career began at the same time that South Africa’s did, in 1889, with the first representative match between England and South Africa to be accorded Test status. Prior to this, Rose-Innes would have taken part in recreational matches between teams of unequal numbers or between teams with more than eleven players. But when R.G. Warton brought an English side to South Africa and played the hosts at Port Elizabeth on level terms, eleven versus eleven, a new era was born there, albeit retrospectively.

Rose-Innes scored 0 and 13 and took 5 wickets for 43 runs in England’s first innings of that particular match and on the basis of those figures he was selected for the second Test, played at Cape Town two weeks later. As J. Briggs created records figures of 8 for 11 in an innings and 15 for 28 in a match, South Africa were comprehensively beaten by an innings and 202 runs to lose their first Test series 2-0. Rose-Innes subsequently played five other first-class matches, three for Kimberley and two for Transvaal. He bowled slow left-arm and "terrorised most batsmen", as one account from the period reported. Playing for Kimberley in the very first Currie Cup match, played at Kimberley, he took 5 for 55 in a losing effort against Transvaal. Like so many of his countrymen from the earliest days of South African cricket, Rose-Innes’ death went unrecorded and therefore no obituary appeared within Wisden for him at the time.

Albert Rose-Innes married to Margaret Evelyn Foster born 1886, Wells, Somerset, England and died 1990 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He had one son, Reginald Rose-Innes (born East London, South Africa 28 February 1915, died Ringmer, East Sussex, England 16 January 2012); one grandson, Crispin Rose-Innes (born Johannesburg, South Africa 27 January 1949); and one grand daughter, Joanna Rose-Innes (born Crawley, England 7 December 1954).