The great Australian, with three shots for every ball, exemplified the freedoms of a
more romantic age. Mark Ray remembers a dashing batsman and a generous man
Allan Border’s 1989 Ashes tour was my first major assignment as a journalist. On the first day of the fifth Test at Trent Bridge, as Geoff Marsh and Mark Taylor were batting through to the close on the way to an opening stand of 329, a colleague and I, with our deadlines passed, decided to have a well-earned pint. As we chatted in the members’ pavilion, I looked up at the row of old bats screwed on to the panelling above the bar.
There, in the centre, was a dark brown one with a metal plaque under it, which said it was Victor Trumper’s bat from his legendary 1902 tour of England. On that trip Trumper made 11 first-class centuries, one of them in a single session of the Old Trafford Test. Admittedly the rest were made against lesser sides but, as ever with Trumper, it was the style that became part of the legend. Trumper entertained the English crowds and, as always, he won their hearts. He scored quickly and with flair, prompting Wisden to describe him as the best batsman in the world.
Trumper was generous and
charming to a fault – truly, a
romantic figure
I had always been intrigued by the legend of the tall, dashing batsman who played with carefree grace. In the history books I read as a boy he was described as Australia’s greatest batsman before Don Bradman. But it was the legend of the man that made him special. Bradman’s legend was based on unbelievable statistics. He was the run machine par excellence. Trumper was the artist, the genius who cared more for his team-mates and his fans than for his place in the record books. Trumper’s greatness could easily be missed during a look through the statistics but to read a biography was to be entranced.
Trumper was generous and charming to a fault, casual in dress, kind to children and greatly loved by opponents and team-mates – truly, a romantic figure. He ran a sports store in Sydney but was no great success. He was not hard enough, giving free equipment or discounts to people short of money. During his career there was a stand at the Sydney Cricket Ground called the Penny Stand – because entrance was a penny. Legend has it that Trumper would always arrive early and, with pockets full of enough loose change, walk over to the side of the ground opposite the dressing rooms to hand out pennies to poor boys hoping to get in. They came to expect Vic to give them a day at the famous ground to see their heroes in action.
Steve Waugh’s love of his battered old baggy-green cap was inspired by Trumper’s attitude to his Australian skull cap. He cherished it and never wanted a new one. To him the first was so precious that a replacement would not do. He was also celebrated for his casual approach to his playing clothes. Not for him the adage that if you cannot be a cricketer, you should at least look like one. After a day’s play Trumper would roll up his cream trousers and drop them in his kitbag. The next morning he would simply unfurl them, put them on and head out. He was obviously interested in substance rather than appearance and I loved him for it.
He was tall and
elegant, more Dravid
than Tendulkar
One of the reasons Trumper’s Test average ended below 40 was that he never sought easy runs. If the weather was fine and the pitch flat he usually threw his wicket away to give team-mates a chance to make runs. But, when the pitch was wet and treacherous, Trumper, as the senior batsman, would take full responsibility. This was not merely a whim. It is said that at New South Wales practice sessions he would slip the groundsman a shilling or two to prepare one wet wicket. After a net on a good pitch, he would go up to the end and practise on a sticky. I remember going to the same nets for a state squad practice session, looking to the far end and wondering if that was the strip the great Trumper used for his wet-weather practice.
Years earlier I was a teenager playing in the lower grades of Sydney club cricket. One day we played at Redfern Oval, a dustbowl of a ground ravaged by a winter of rugby league. Before play, as we inspected the unwelcoming pitch, a team-mate pointed to a window on the second storey of a building across the road, behind the sightscreen. He said it was the one Trumper broke with a straight drive about 60 years before. It was a big, big hit. The window had been left broken for years, in tribute to the great man. It had been repaired by the time I saw it. I think the building is still there.
I once saw some footage of Trumper batting. He is wearing a large white hat, looks tall and elegant – more the shape of Rahul Dravid than Sachin Tendulkar. He is facing a fast bowler and late-cuts him with aplomb, a classy, clever shot and exactly what you would expect from a batsman said to have had three shots for every ball.
The only other footage I have seen of Trumper is that of his funeral in 1915 at Waverley cemetery in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. Like so many Romantic heroes he died young, at 37, after a few years of sad, public decline. It is a hero’s funeral, the horse-drawn hearse followed by dignitaries, and the parade watched by thousands of the fans who loved their Vic more than any other player.
If the mature Bradman stands for the ruthless pursuit of success which typifies modern Australian cricket, Trumper stands for the spirit of an earlier age, for a more carefree approach that put style and entertainment above results.
Every afternoon of that 1989 Test, my colleague and I had a ritual pint under his bat.
MARK RAY is an Australian first-class cricketer turned journalist. He has published several books, including two collections of his photographs