Name:

Douglas, John W H T

Nickname:

Johnny Wont Hit Today

Date of Birth:

03 Sep 1882

Gender:

Men

Place of Birth:

Stoke Newington

Date Died:

19 Dec 1930

Career:

Test: 1911 - 1925
First Class: 1901 - 1928

Teams:

Essex (Regional)
England (Country)

1921: Armstrong leads Australia to 5-0 thumping of England (Sydney)

Johnny Douglas: Ashes winning captain, Olympic Gold Medalist

John "Johnny" William Henry Tyler Douglas (3 September 1882 - 19 December 1930) was a fine all round cricketer and captain of the England team. He was an Olympic boxer having won three bouts in a day to win a gold medal in 1908.

Douglas cut a dashing figure in the field and at the crease. His batting style was described as “obdurate”. In fact, it was so obdurate that a barracker in the crowd at Melbourne in 1911-12 interpreted his initials JWHT as “Johnny Won’t Hit Today”. Douglas as captain was on a winning roll at the time and countered this by saying that the initials stood for “Johnny Won His Test”.

Douglas captained England eighteen times, with a Test match record of won eight, lost eight, drawn two. Successful as stand-in captain to the injured Plum Warner in Australia in 1911, he won the series 4-1. On the 1920/21 tour of Australia he led a depleted post-war side which suffered a 0–5 'whitewash'.

In a first class career spanning 27 years with Essex, Douglas scored 24,531 runs at 27.90 with 26 hundreds. He also took 1893 wickets at 23.32. In 23 Tests, he had markedly less success, scoring 962 runs at 29.15 and 45 wickets at 33.02. 

Aged 48 in 1930, Douglas drowned when the S S Oberon, on which he and his father were travelling, was wrecked seven miles south of the Laeso Trindel Lightship, Denmark.

Douglas was a rare dual-sport champion, admired for his toughness and competitive spirit. His long service to Essex cricket, where he captained for many years, reflected loyalty and resilience. While his cricketing tactics became outdated as the game modernised, Douglas’s legacy endures as a tough, principled leader and a quintessential English sportsman of his time.