Norman Armstrong

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Norman Foster Armstrong (22 December 1892 – 19 January 1990) was an English cricketer who spent his entire first-class career with Leicestershire, from 1919 to 1939. He was a right-handed middle-order batsman and a part-time right-arm medium-pace bowler. Armstrong appeared in 386 first-class matches, all for Leicestershire, and scored 19,001 runs at 32.98, including 36 centuries with a top score of 186. After an initial single game in 1919, he returned in 1926 and became a regular from 1927, batting at number 3 from 1928 for about 12 seasons. His most productive years came after he turned 40; in 1933 he became Leicestershire’s first player to reach 2,000 runs in a season, finishing with 2,112 at 43.10, and he topped the county averages in 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1939. Although never selected for higher representative honors, he was known for a solid, stubborn defence and tenacity, earning the nickname “the Valiant Armstrong.” Wisden later noted that his defence became rock-like and that he occasionally added more attractive strokes, especially in his later years. He contributed to Leicestershire’s improvement through coaching and a more professional setup after World War I. Armstrong continued to play through the war years and appeared in some non-first-class matches in 1945, but he did not play first-class cricket after 1946. He died in Branksome, Poole, Dorset, at the age of 97, and was one of the era’s longest-lived first-class cricketers.