James Hugh Sinclair (16 October 1876 – 23 February 1913) was a South African cricketer who played in 25 Test matches from 1896 to 1911.

Jimmy Sinclair stood six feet four inches tall[2] and was a "prodigious right-handed hitter and an excellent fast bowler, combining a nice variety of pace with a high delivery".

[3] He made his first-class debut for Transvaal in the 1892–93 Currie Cup a few weeks after turning 16, opening both bowling and batting, taking eight wickets and scoring 37 and 11.

At this stage in its history South Africa had played three Tests, all against England, and been so outclassed that no batsman had scored more than 29.

In December 1899 it was recorded that he had joined Little's scouts and that he had expressed as fervent a desire to bowl over a few Boers as he did to knock out Lord Hawke's team in the final Test at Cape Town.

By this stage other South Africans were also contributing substantially, such as the all-rounder Aubrey Faulkner and his fellow leg-spinners Reggie Schwarz, Bert Vogler and Gordon White, and the 4–1 series victory was a team effort.

[21] Various stories are told about him, including that on one occasion a ball he had hit for a six at the Old Wanderers Ground in Johannesburg landed on a train bound for the Cape and was only recovered at its destination.

[22] In Rowland Bowen's extensive history of cricket, Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development throughout the World (1970), he deplored Sinclair's treatment of the non-white South African Test player Charlie Llewellyn during the tour of Australia in 1910–11: "[Llewellyn] was tormented by his white fellow tourists to such an extent that for peace and quiet in the hotels where the team stayed, he had to take refuge in the W.Cs and lock himself in.

[24] The South African writers Jonty Winch and Richard Parry investigated the relations between Sinclair and Llewellyn in the light of Bowen's assertion and published their findings in 2009.

As Llewellyn was being paid more than the other players and had shown patchy form on the tour, Winch and Parry suggest that the antagonism may have been motivated by resentment.

[29] Winch and Parry concluded that while "it cannot be assumed that Bowen was simply making it up", he may have misinterpreted or exaggerated his information and used it to belabour the South African apartheid regime and the English cricket establishment, both of which he detested.