Kumar Narayan

Who was Kumar Narayan?

Prince Kumar Hitendra Singh Narayan played first-class cricket for Somerset in 1909 and 1910. He later played in first-class matches for teams brought together by his brother, the Maharaja of Cooch Behar. He was born at Cooch Behar, Bengal, India and died at Darjeeling, also in Bengal.

Known variously in his cricket career as "Kumar Narayan" or "Hitendra Narayan", he was educated at Eton College and Cambridge University and was a forceful right-handed batsman. He made a lot of runs for the amateur Somerset Stragglers cricket team in 1908. But his four first-class matches for Somerset in 1909 and 1910 were not successful, with a top score of just 16 in his first game, against the 1909 Australians.

In 1918, he played three matches for his brother's scratch side against teams composed largely of expatriate Englishmen, captaining his team in the last two of them. The matches have first-class status although all three were of only two-days' duration; Narayan was not successful in any of them as a batsman. He died at the age of 30 from influenza.