Robert Nelson

Robert Prynne Nelson (7 August 1912 – 29 October 1940) was an English cricketer active from 1931 to 1939 who played for Middlesex and Northamptonshire. He was Northants club captain in the 1938 and 1939 seasons. He appeared in 77 first-class matches as a left-handed batsman who bowled left-arm orthodox spin. He scored 3,394 runs with a highest score of 123 not out, one of two centuries, and took 62 wickets with a best performance of three for 7.

During the Second World War, Nelson was a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Marines. He died when the barracks at Deal, where he was serving, were hit by a bomb dropped from an Italian Fiat BR.20 bomber, part of a squadron sent to attack military installations around the Kent coast. He was 28. His gravestone in the military section of Deal Cemetery records that he was "a lover of cricket [and] he maintained in his life the spirit of the game".