John David Currie was a sportsman who played rugby union

Rugby union

Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

 for England

England national rugby union team

The England national rugby union team represents England in rugby union. They compete in the annual Six Nations Championship with France, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, and Wales. They have won this championship on 26 occasions, 12 times winning the Grand Slam, making them the most successful team in...

 in 25 Test matches

Test match (rugby union)

Test match in rugby union is a match recognised as being a full international match by at least one of the participating teams' governing bodies. It is an unofficial but widely used term in the sport....

 and also appeared in first-class

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 matches for Somerset

Somerset County Cricket Club

Somerset County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Somerset...

 and Oxford University

Oxford University Cricket Club

Oxford University Cricket Club is a first-class cricket team, representing the University of Oxford. It plays its home games at the University Parks in Oxford, England...

. He was born at Clifton

Clifton, Bristol

Clifton is a suburb of the City of Bristol in England, and the name of both one of the city's thirty-five council wards. The Clifton ward also includes the areas of Cliftonwood and Hotwells...

, Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

 and died at Leicester

Leicester

Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...

.

Cricket career

In cricket, Currie was a right-handed middle- or lower-order batsman. In 1953, at the disastrous Bath cricket festival where the first match, Bertie Buse

Bertie Buse

Herbert Francis Thomas "Bertie" Buse, born at Ashley Down, Bristol, on 5 August 1910 and died at Bath on 23 February 1992, was a cricketer who played 304 first-class matches for Somerset before and after the Second World War.-Cricket career:...

's benefit

Benefit (sports)

A benefit or testimonial is a match or season of activities granted by a sporting body to a loyal sportsman to boost their income before retirement. Often this is in the form of a match for which all the ticket proceeds are given to the player in question.There have been occasions when a...

 match, was over in a single day, he made his first-class debut in the third game, against Leicestershire

Leicestershire County Cricket Club

Leicestershire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Leicestershire. It has also been representative of the county of Rutland....

, scoring 4 and 13 in another match of feeble batting that was over well inside two days. He retained his place for the next match, a non-first-class game against the Royal Air Force

Royal Air Force cricket team

The Royal Air Force cricket team is a cricket side representing the British Royal Air Force. The team played 11 first-class matches: nine between 1922 and 1932, mostly against other branches of the Services, and another two in 1945 and 1946. Their home ground is the Royal Air Force Sports Ground,...

, but those were his only appearances for Somerset's first team, although he played for the second eleven in the Minor Counties Championship up to 1955. In both the 1956 and 1957 seasons, he was at Oxford University and he was tried for the cricket team

Oxford University Cricket Club

Oxford University Cricket Club is a first-class cricket team, representing the University of Oxford. It plays its home games at the University Parks in Oxford, England...

 in several matches, but with little success. His highest score was 38, made out of a total of 95 in the match against Yorkshire

Yorkshire County Cricket Club

Yorkshire County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Yorkshire as one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure....

 in 1957. He had dropped out of the Oxford side well before the University Match in both seasons and so did not win a cricket Blue to go with the rugby ones. After leaving Oxford, he played second eleven cricket for Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire County Cricket Club

Gloucestershire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Gloucestershire. Its limited overs team is called the Gloucestershire Gladiators....

for a couple of seasons.