Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Saturday 07 April 1928

Roy Kilner.

It seems hard to believe, despite the grievous assurance given by the news, that Roy Kilner is dead. He had about him what might be called a solid and permanent vitality; he was one of those foursquare folk who might be thought to be immune from mortal frailness of body just as they seem to be free from temperamental tremors. But unfortunately it is only too true that this famous Yorkshire and England cricketer has taken his last wicket and hit his last boundary. An old hand at the game—it was nearly seventeen years ago that he began his county career—he was comparatively young in age; what one expected of him was that after several seasons more of first-class cricket he would join the ranks of the veterans and be remembered in his retirement as one of Yorkshire’s great all-round players.

So indeed he will be remembered, but not, alas, in his retirement. He was cricketer who has left an unforgettable impression on the minds of all who were familiar with his play. It was not only that everything he did, he did well. In all his doings on the field there was not only efficiency but character, and shrewd sturdy Yorkshire character at that.

His crafty left-hand slow balls, “humorous, but lingering,*’ that used to inflict a sudden comic perplexity on batsmen who had been taking audacious liberties with Yorkshire bowling; his hard and determined hitting; his jaunty confidence and courage that made him such good man to have at a pinch – who can forget these things? And who can believe that shall never see them more? Yet we never shall; this great and gallant player is lost to Yorkshire and to cricket, and the loss is indeed a heavy one. Were his powers over-strained by incessant all-the-year-round cricket in various climates, each of them trying in its own way ?

One wonders; he was never a man to spare himself. Howsoever that may be, he has passed, and his passing brings sorrow to all who love the game he played so keenly and so well.