Career
His professional cricket career lasted from 1902 to 1933 during which he played first-class cricket for Kent County Cricket Club and made one Test match appearance for England. He played football at the top domestic level between 1905 and 1921 for Newcastle United, Sheffield United and Arsenal and also made a single international appearance for England in that sport. He briefly managed Tottenham Hotspur after he retired as a sportsman.
In a first-class cricket career lasting 32 years from the age of 16, Hardinge, a right-handed opening batsman, scored 33,519 runs and 75 centuries.
As of February 2016 his run total puts him 46th on the all-time list of runs scored in first-class cricket, and he passed 1,000 runs for a season 18 times. His one appearance in Test cricket came against Warwick Armstrong"s 1921 Australians in a match where Jack Hobbs had to withdraw on the opening day because of appendicitis.
Hardinge scored 25 and 5 and was not picked again. Hardinge continued to score heavily in county cricket, his best season being 1928 when, at 42 years of age, he scored 2,446 runs at an average just under 60 runs per innings.
He scored centuries in four consecutive innings in 1913 and four times scored centuries in both innings of a match. in 1921, he became only the third cricketer, after C. B. Fry and Warwick Armstrong, to score a double-century and a century in the same match.
He bowled slow left arm spinners well enough to take 371 career wickets. As a football player, Hardinge played as an inside forward. He started out at various amateur clubs in Kent before signing for Newcastle United in May 1905.
After two and a half years there, mainly as a reserve (he played only nine league matches), he moved to Sheffield United for £350.
There he flourished, becoming one of the trickiest inside forwards in the game, scoring nearly 50 goals in just under 150 league matches. In the summer of 1913 Hardinge returned to the south, signing for Woolwich Arsenal (who had just moved into their new Highbury ground, and would drop the "Woolwich" from their name a year later), and played there until the outbreak of World War I. Hardinge served as a Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy, and upon being demobbed after the end of the war, played another season at Arsenal before dropping down to the reserves.
He retired in 1921, having played 55 times and scored 14 goals for the Gunners first team After retiring from cricket, Hardinge worked for John Wisden & Company
He also had a spell as a coach of Tottenham Hotspur"s reserve team in the 1930s and for a short period became caretaker manager of the First Team in 1935 after the rapid departure of Percy Smith.
