MacBryan was educated at Exeter School, where he played cricket for the school and was captain in 1911. After school he joined the Somerset Light Infantry. In 1914, a month after the outbreak of World War I, he was wounded and captured at the battle of Le Cateau, and he was a prisoner for the rest of the war.[5] After the war he went up to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he won his blue for cricket in 1920.[6]
An amateur and a right-hand batsman, MacBryan was the leading Somerset batsman in the years after the World War I and was called up for the Old Trafford Test match against the South Africans in 1924. But the match was ruined by rain, and MacBryan remains the only Test cricketer who neither batted, bowled nor dismissed anyone in the field (where he spent 66.5 overs). His chance never came again.[1]