Dudley Rippon

Who was Dudley Rippon?

Albert Dudley Eric Rippon played 31 first-class cricket matches for Somerset, all but one of them in the 1914 and 1919 seasons on either side of the First World War. In many of his first-class matches, he opened the batting with his identical twin brother, Sydney Rippon.

The Rippon family hailed from London but had relocated to Radstock in Somerset, and the twins were sent to school at King's College, Taunton, where they made a lot of runs and caused confusion by their close resemblance to each other. Sydney joined the Knowle Cricket Club in Bristol and scored heavily in club cricket; Dudley got a job on a Bath newspaper and played for a local team.

Dudley Rippon was a right-handed batsman and a right-arm medium pace bowler. He played regularly for Somerset in the 1914 season and was joined in his third match by his brother, with whom he opened the innings. In his fourth match, against Sussex, he carried his bat for an unbeaten 105. Rippon himself was also injured in this match and had to use a runner. Later in the same season, in the match against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, he took five Yorkshire wickets in an innings for 107 runs, the only time he returned a five-wicket-innings analysis; Somerset lost the match by an innings inside two days, but Rippon also top-scored in each Somerset innings.