Baby Chakraborty, Kolkata :- Year 1915, World War I is going on in Europe. The Germans are launching a heavy attack on Great Britain. The death toll is increasing every day. Especially young men who were joining the military were dying in various regiments.Harry Lee, a Middlesex cricketer, was attached to the 13th Battalion of the London Regiment. From 9th May he was fighting at Auber’s Ridge. He is presumed to have died in that battle. His funeral and memorial service were arranged by his parents. Fifteen years after his death, Lee played his first Test match against South Africa at Johannesburg on 13 February 1931.
Lee was a cricketer from Middlesex. His father was injured by a bullet during the war. German soldiers took him to a hospital in Valencenes, France. After six weeks of treatment, Lee was handed over to the German Red Cross Society. He received permission to return to England in October and embarked for his home country.
He was discharged from the military in December. He was awarded the British War Medal 1914-15, Silver War Batch and Victory Medal. During London’s treatment, he learned that several muscles in his leg had been damaged, causing his legs to be unequal (one leg shorter than the upper leg) for the rest of his life.While in the military, Lee worked as a filing clerk in the military office, but he never gave up his cricketing habit. He scored a century against Lunching College for the Royal Army Service Corps. Meanwhile, he decided to move to India. Here, Lee started working as a football and cricket coach under the Maharaja of Cooch Behar.
In March 1918, Lee began playing first-class cricket in India for the Maharaja’s XI of Cooch Behar. In the first game he took five wickets in the first innings and three in the second innings though his team lost by one wicket. After that he continued to play cricket in India for a long time. India’s first Test cricket captain CK Naidu called him “a very nice batsman”.
After the end of the war in 1919, county cricket resumed in England. Lee started playing for Middlesex. He scored 1223 runs in 19 matches in 1919. The next season he scored 1518 runs in 23 matches at an average of 43.37. He scored more than a thousand runs in 16 seasons of first-class cricket.
In 1931, Harry Lee was working at St. Andrews College in South Africa and Rhodes University in Grahamstown. Seven players of the Percy Chapman-led England team were injured at the time. Harry Lee was called up to play for England in the third Test. Lee played his first Test match on February 13, 1931, against South Africa, 15 years after he was declared dead.
The story does not end here. Lee never received an MCC cap or blazer despite playing for England. One of the schools where he worked in South Africa, where he was involved in a dispute, was accused of leaving without giving official notice. Jack Hobbes points out that Lee visited England for this reason.
