Background
He was born at Hessle, Yorkshire and died at Winchester, Hampshire.
He was born at Hessle, Yorkshire and died at Winchester, Hampshire.
Winchester College; New College.
Educated at Winchester College and at New College, Oxford, Joy played as a right-handed tail-end batsman and a left-arm fast-medium bowler in one of the trial matches for the Oxford University cricket team of 1901, but was not selected for a first-class game. From 1906, Joy was employed as a tutor in the household of the Rajah of Dhar in India and then on the staff of the Central India College. In September 1908, he played in three first-class cricket matches for the Europeans team, taking 28 wickets in the three matches, including 10 in a match twice.
From 1909, Joy returned to the United Kingdom and played a few matches in each of the next four seasons for Somerset, though with limited success.
His matches in 1910 and 1911 all came late in the season, indicating that he had become a schoolmaster, and only in the last match of 1910, against Yorkshire did he develop anything like his Indian form, finishing with an innings return of five for 44 in a rain-ruined match. There were a further four matches in 1911 without success and in 1912 his sole appearance was against the Australians: he scored 6 and 7 and failed to take a wicket.
That was Joy"s last first-class cricket match. His obituary in Wisden Cricketers" Almanack in 1967 states that he was the father of Nancy Joy (Sylvia Nancy Wansborough, 1915–1997), who was prominent in women"s cricket and wrote books about lieutenant
Second lieutenant F. Doctorate. H. Joy was recorded by the London Gazette as having joined the Third Battalion of the King"s Own Scottish Borderers on 1 October 1914.
In April 1917 (reported May 1917) he was recorded as a captain and as having been replaced on the special reserve. But later in 1917 he was back on the general staff as a captain. He was discharged with the rank of captain in 1920.