Sydney Harry Curnow (16 December 1907 – 28 July 1986) was a South African cricketer who played in seven Test matches in the 1930–31 and 1931–32 seasons. He was born in Benoni, Transvaal and died at Perth, Western Australia, having emigrated there in the early 1970s. His father was W. S. Curnow, a South African mining engineer, and his mother was a Miss Francis McAuliffe who came from Launceston, Tasmania. Test cricket Curnow was a right-handed opening batsman. He made his first-class debut for Transvaal in 1928–29. In his third first-class match, the first of the 1929–30 season, he hit 99 against Natal. He followed this up with 108 in the next match, which was against Griqualand West. Then in his third match of the season he made 162 against Orange Free State. There was no Test cricket in South Africa that season, but the following year, England toured, and Curnow made an unbeaten 83 in an early-season match against the touring side. That led to his selection for the first Test match of the five-game series, but he was not a success, scoring just 13 and 8. He was dropped for the second Test, but reappeared in the South Africa side for the third and fourth Tests. In the first of these games he made 2 and 9; in the second, his scores were 7 and 12. He was dropped for the fifth Test, having scored just 51 runs in six innings in his first series. Despite this modest record, he was picked for the South African tour to Australia and New Zealand in 1931–32, and decent scores in warm-up matches brought him back to the Test team for the first game of the five-match series. Again, he was not successful, scoring 11 and 8 – the second innings 8 taking him 71 minutes against the wiles of the 49-year-old Bert Ironmonger, who took nine wickets in the match. Dropped for the second Test, he came back into favour after an innings of 158 in a non-first-class game against a Victoria Country XI where, despite the doubtful calibre of the opposition bowling attack, the other South African front-line batsmen failed. That brought him back into the Test team for the third Test and at last, in his fifth Test match, he made some runs, scoring 47 in the first innings and 9 in the second: the 47 would prove