Sidney Clarke Adams 1904-1945

	Player number 132 (f-c debut for Northamptonshire – 7 July 1926)
Birthplace	Northampton
First-Class	11 matches, 158 runs @ 10.53; 13 wickets @ 19.23; 5 catches

Employed in the County Treasurer’s department at County Hall in Northampton, leg-spinner Sidney Adams made a remarkable entrance into first-class cricket for Northamptonshire in 1926.  He travelled to Ireland to play against Dublin University in June, was selected for the return match against the same opponents at Northampton a month later, scored 87 and – getting his first bowl for the County in the students’ second innings – claimed 6-32, including two victims with his first two deliveries and another before the end of an extraordinary opening over; six balls, three wickets for one run.  His victims included the future playwright and Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett, bowled for a single.  Despite this ‘very satisfactory’ showing (according to the Chronicle and Echo) Adams wasn’t picked again for six years.  Prominent in local football as well as cricket he then played eight Championship matches early in 1932, taking 4-21 to bowl the County to victory over Glamorgan, before returning to the club game with County Hall and Old Northamptonians.  He also reappeared for Northamptonshire in some wartime fixtures.  Adams joined the army in 1942 and a few weeks before the end of the Second World War was killed in action while being flown in by glider to Hamminkeln during the crossing of the Rhine with the 6^th Armoured Division, serving as a battery surveyor; his final resting place is the Reichswald Forest war cemetery in Germany.