Cecil Harry Parkin (18 February 1886 – 15 June 1943), known as Cec or Ciss Parkin, was an English cricketer who played in 10 Test matches between 1920 and 1924 and made 157 appearances for Lancashire County Cricket Club. Life and career Parkin played one first-class match for Yorkshire in 1906, before it was discovered that he was born twenty yards outside the county boundary. Despite the fact that many cricketers had appeared for Yorkshire who were not born inside the county boundaries he then spent the next 8 years playing league and minor counties cricket for Durham. From 1910 he represented Church CC in the Lancashire League, taking 685 wickets in six seasons at an average of 8.27. He then joined Lancashire and played at Old Trafford from 1914 to 1926, although four of these years were lost to the Great War. He was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1924. He was a mercurial, inventive off spinner who used flight, guile and turn to dismiss batsman and demanded attacking fields from his captains. He could be expensive, as he disdained any policy of containment against good batsmen on flat pitches and was criticised for over experimentation, but at his best he could run through any side. In 1921 he was described as the best bowler in England. He took 14 Leicestershire County Cricket Club wickets on his debut for the Red Rose at Liverpool in 1914, when he was already 28, and did not become a full-time cricketer until the age of 34 in 1921, the year he topped the Test averages against Warwick Armstrong's mighty Australian side. Before then he had combined his Saturday league commitments for Rochdale CC with appearances for Lancashire. He took 14 wickets in the 1919 Roses Match at Old Trafford at just 10 apiece and, in the first innings of the Gentlemen v Players match of 1920 dismissed 9 Gentlemen at the Oval, six clean bowled, for 85. He was picked for England's tour of Australia that winter and took 5 for 60 in the first innings at Adelaide in a difficult rubber for the England team. He was England's most successful bowler in all first-class games on the tour however, with 73 at 21 each. In all he played 8 Tests against Australia without ever appearing on the winning side. He is one of the few players to have opened