Gilbert Jessop, who died on 11 May, 1955, was the fastest run-scorer in the history of cricket.

Yet he was first picked for England as a fast bowler. And despite his short and stocky build he was a fielder of incredible speed.

Mr Jessop was a cricketer who generated huge excitement in the crowds in the days when sedateness was the order of the day. In 1898 Wisden , the cricketing bible, said of the Gentleman v Players match: “His terrific hitting aroused the spectators to the highest pitch”.

In one match, he scored 157 runs in an hour. He also completed the “double” of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a season.

Gilbert Laird Jessop was born on 19 May, 1874 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the 11th child of Henry Edward Jessop, a surgeon, and his wife Susannah Radford Hughes.

As a youngster he went to grammar school in Cheltenham, where he won a place in the first XI at the age of 13 and developed into an all-rounder. When his father died three years later, he was forced to leave and earn a living as a schools' games supervisor.

Later he went to Christ’s College, Cambridge, intending to study for the Church. He was captain of the university XI but left without a degree, so realised that his career would be as a man in flannels, not a man of the cloth.

Mr Jessop played club cricket in Suffolk, Oxfordshire, and Essex. In 1894 he made his first-class debut for Gloucestershire, and soon made his name for rapid scoring and taking over the play. In 1903 against Sussex he made 286 out of the 355 total in three hours and scored a half-century in 12 minutes against Somerset a year later.

In one match in 1900, for Gloucestershire against the first West Indies team to tour England, he made 157 in an hour.

Mr Jessop was not paid to play, so, from 1899 he was employed as director of a tobacco firm and as a cricket writer with the Daily Mail , which was his main source of income until 1909, when he became secretary of Gloucestershire.

He was first selected to play against Australia in 1899, principally as a fast bowler. In 1902 against Australia at the Oval, he went in to bat when England were 48 for five, needing another 225 to win. He made a century in 75 minutes, a feat described by Wisden as “what would have been scarcely possible under the same circumstances to any other living batsman”.

In 1907, against South Africa at Lord’s, he scored 93 in 63 balls. Mr Jessop was, however, not a steady player, talking risks that often meant his quick dismissal.

Nevertheless, he built up an entertaining legend, nicknamed “the Croucher” because of his hunched posture at the wicket. Once, selected for the Gentlemen v the Players match at Lord’s, he declined because he had already promised a friend he would play in a village match.

He played his last innings in first-class cricket just before the First World War in 1914. During the war, after enlisting in the 14th Manchester regiment, he spoke at recruitment drives. He was invalided out of the Army with heart problems in 1917 and after the war wrote modestly of the golden age of cricket, two novels for schoolboys and a manual, Cricket and How to Play It .

In 1902 he had married Millicent Osborne of New South Wales, whom he had met on board ship while returning from touring Australia the previous year.

Their son Gilbert, also played first-class cricket and became a clergyman in Dorset , where his father had been living for 19 years when he died.

His obituary in The Times said he was a modest and generous man and “one of whom the muse of history leaves on record”.