9

Stats

***

Collapso cricket

Never before in the 158-year history of New South Wales v. Victoria cricket had there been such a collapse. In six overs late on the Thursday night of their New Year clash on a greentop in Sydney, Victoria – already 234 runs behind – lost 3–0, having promoted two night watchmen in rookie bowlers Scott Boland and James Muirhead.

The unprecedented slide continued early on Day 3 when the Vics lost three more wickets for hardly anything – including just 1 run (to Muirhead) off the bat.

Each of the first four were out for ducks, Boland taking thirty-eight balls for his globe.

When captain and No. 6 Matthew Wade also fell without scoring, Victoria was a calamitous 6-9 before a partial recovery led by Glenn Maxwell, who in scoring a whirlwind 127 to go with his first innings of 94 contributed 55 per cent of Victoria’s runs for the match.

In a century of first-class cricket, no Victorian team had ever been so humbled. The 1903–04 Vics were 5-5 against the touring Englishmen in Melbourne in February 1904. The Vics were eventually bowled out for 15, still the lowest ever first-class score recorded in Australia. And its XI included eight internationals from ex-Test captain Harry Trott through to ‘the Big Ship’ Warwick Armstrong.

The 2013–14 team, which was to finish last on the table, included seven who had played for Australia. An eighth, David Hussey – Mike’s brother – was Victoria’s twelfth man.

***

‘If only,’ said A B

News had filtered through of Glenn Maxwell’s latest $1 million contract to play in the Indian Premier League in 2014. ‘I’d like to be a player now,’ said Test legend Allan Border.

Twenty years earlier, his Australian base contract was $80 000 plus a little more for being captain … $90 000 tops.

Sadly, he said, his salary of under $2000 a week didn’t quite stack up with $1 million for six weeks of bash-and-crash cricket.

***

A long time coming

One of Australia’s few ‘good news’ stories from the two extraordinary lopsided 2013 Ashes series was the consistent contributions at the head of the Australian order by the mature-aged journeyman Chris ‘Buck’ Rogers.

A prolific three-figure-man at Sheffield Shield and county level, Rogers finally broke through for his first Test century late in the summer at Chester-le-Street, and back in Australia added two more in the Christmas and New Year Tests in Melbourne and Sydney.

He remains among a group of just eight to also make 20 000 first-class runs before their first Test ton.

Most first-class runs at time of maiden Test 100
	Innings	Runs
Andy Sandham	647	26 807
David Denton	871	24 974
Ernest Tyldesley	661	22 623
C B Fry	488	22 275
Ted Bowley	676	21 807
W G Grace	482	20 748
Peter Kirsten	539	20 730
Chris Rogers	440	20 038
Other Australians:
Darren Lehmann	388	19 257
Mike Hussey	321	15 343

***

Doubling it up

The genius of Shane Warne was never more apparent than in the epic 2005 Ashes summer, the greatest set of five games ever contested between England and Australia.

At a time when his own personal life was in tatters and form in the lead-up county games ordinary, Warne remained the lynchpin of Australia’s attack.

In the lead-up to the opening Test at Lord’s, he called in coach Terry Jenner to assist. ‘I’m bowling crap T J,’ he declared.

Jenner felt the off-field rumblings and distractions were sucking the energy and passion from his star charger and after the session told me that his champion would be fortunate to take even twenty wickets all summer.

Warne took forty.

***

Most expensive Ashes wickets

Until high noon on the Saturday of the 2002–03 Sydney Test, Matthew Hoggard possessed a record no-one else wanted.

His Ashes bowling average had ballooned to 313, surpassing the infamous mark of 281 by Cambridge University’s J J Warr, who for fifty years had had the most expensive Ashes wicket of all.

Coming into the New Year Test, Hoggard had taken 1-248 before conceding 65 runs late on the Friday of the game.

Finally he was rewarded for his hard work, shortened run-up and quicker approach, and having dismissed Steve Waugh found himself on a hat-trick with the back-to-back dismissals of Andy Bichel and Brett Lee. With four for 92, his average tumbled from 313 to 68.

***

Not so weighty

So steamy was Colombo one November that Australian all-rounder Tony Dodemaide lost four kilograms in a training session on match eve leading into his first overseas Test and first in four years at Khettarama. He took a wicket with the first ball on his return, the elegant Roshan Mahanama for 14.

***

Rags to riches

Only months after being dropped to Ringwood’s third XI, paceman Kosala Kuruppuarachchi was picked for Sri Lanka’s Test XI and in an astonishing debut took five for 44 against Pakistan at Colombo. The twenty-year-old played half a season of lower XI Melbourne District cricket in 1985–86 before returning home at Christmas.

A decade earlier, a young Ian Botham had also played club cricket, with Melbourne University, and enjoyed only modest success, both for the Students and his mid-week team the Plastic XI, where he was invariably used at first-change.

Named in England’s Test team halfway through Australia’s 1977 tour, Botham took five wickets on debut, beginning one of the great international careers capped by his knighthood in 2007.

***

Life begins at fifty

Australia has had only one fifty-year-old cricketer: Bert ‘Dainty’ Ironmonger.

But it wasn’t until 1980, almost a decade after his death when his long-lost birth certificate was uncovered, that Ironmonger was found to have been fifty during his last Test and not forty-nine, as Wisden had been reporting for years.

‘It was always a standing joke on how old Dad was,’ said his son Tom. ‘I don’t think even he knew.’

He was sifting through some old papers when he found his father’s birth certificate confirming that Ironmonger was born in 1882, not 1883.

The certificate confirmed that his last Test was at fifty years and 327 days in Sydney in 1932–33.

All of Ironmonger’s fourteen Tests were on Australian soil. Bill Woodfull had asked for him to reinforce his touring party early in 1934 but permission was denied as Ironmonger’s action was said to be suspect. Don Bradman rated Ironmonger as the best bowler never to tour the UK.

The oldest Ashes Test cricketer is 52-year-old Yorkshireman Wilfred Rhodes.

OLD WARRIOR: Bert Ironmonger

FRONT COVER: Bert Ironmonger, aged fifty-one in 1933–34, as featured on the cover of the Australian Cricketer

***

A run machine

There was no more outstanding Saturday afternoon club cricketer in Australia than Bobby Simpson in the ’60s and ’70s. His appetite for runs, no matter where, was simply insatiable.

The ex-Test captain topped the NSW first-grade aggregates five times and was in ‘prime’ touch when recalled as Australia’s captain, aged forty-one, in 1977.

In 1967–68, in what he initially thought would be his final first-class season, he broke ‘Sunny Jim’ Mackay’s 61-year-old club record of 1041 runs. In twelve innings, the master accumulator scored a double century, five other 100s and reached 50 four other times. The highest of his double centuries for Westies was 229 at Sutherland in 1969–70 and came about late on the opening evening after he was sledged by Sutherland’s opening bowler Les Ritchie. ‘We’d bowled them out with about forty minutes left on the first day,’ he said. ‘The challenge I’d set myself that season was to score at a run a minute, so I threw the bat a bit and got a few top edges over the slips. Ritchie bounced me a few times, which was okay. But then he starting sledging me, calling me an old this and an old that.

‘I walked up to him at the end of the day and said, “You shouldn’t have done that. I might have come back next week and thrown the bat around and got out, but now I’m going to keep you out there all day.” And I did!’ Westies made 8-363.

Simpson scored another 211 runs for Westies in the separate one-day competition, bringing his season aggregate at Test, state and club level to almost 2500, before retiring from representative ranks, aged thirty-one, to concentrate on his media work.

Incredibly, he made more money as a journalist covering the 1968 Ashes tour and the 1968–69 West Indian summer than he could have made by continuing as Australia’s Test captain.

Bobby Simpson in ‘retirement’ with Western Suburbs
Season	Runs	Average	Age
1967–68	1187	131.88	31
1968–69	328	54.66	32
1969–70	985	70.36	33
1970–71	Did not play
1971–72	851	56.67	35
1972–73	817	58.36	36
1973–74	Did not play
1974–75	412	27.47	38
1975–76	1003	66.87	39
1976–77	408	45.33	40
1977–78	266	88.66	41
Entire career	8169	61.42

Bobby Simpson’s epic 1967–68 summer
Western Suburbs, first grade
67 & 85*	v. Manly-Warringah
130	v. Mosman–Middle Harbour
76	v. Gordon
102	v. Sydney
168*	v. Waverley
16	v. Sydney University
0	v. North Sydney
162	v. Central Cumberland
178*	v. Petersham-Marrickville
85	v. Bankstown-Canterbury
118	v. Manly-Warringah
Western Suburbs one-day matches
58	v. Bankstown-Canterbury
96	v. Balmain (semifinal)
57	v. Gordon (final)
New South Wales
12 & 5	v. Queensland (Brisbane)
51 & 56	v. Western Australia (Perth)
11 & 32	v. South Australia (Adelaide)
277	v. Queensland (Sydney)
137* & 10	v. New Zealand (Sydney)
31 & 53	v. India (Sydney)
62 & 22	v. Victoria (Sydney)
0 & 29	v. Western Australia (Sydney)
Australia
55 & 103	v. India (Adelaide)
109	v. India (Melbourne)
7 & 20	v. India (Sydney)

Season summary
	Mts	Inns	NO	HS	Runs	Ave	100s
Western Suburbs (all matches)	14	15	3	178*	1398	116.50	6
New South Wales	7	15	1	277	788	56.28	2
Australia	3	5	0	109	294	58.80	2
All matches	24	35	4	277	2480	80.00	10
* denotes not out, Ave = Average, HS = Highest Score, Inns = Innings, Mts = Matches, NO = Not Outs

ENDURING: Cricket immortal Bob Simpson

***

Mad-dog

Few have been as colourful as Ian ‘Mad-dog’ Callen, one of a select few to play just one Test for Australia, at the height of the World Series Cricket rumble in the late ’70s.

His one-and-only Test was the decider against the touring Indians in Adelaide.

In a big-hearted, Siddle-like performance, he took six wickets from fifty-five eight-ball overs, Bobby Simpson’s young Australians winning the match and taking the series 3–2.

But Callen fractured a vertebrae from over-straining and never bowled as fast again.

‘I started feeling crook during the match,’ he said. ‘Someone said it was yellow fever but I wasn’t going to withdraw. This was my opportunity. They gave me six injections in my left arm and on I played.’

One of four debutants, alongside Bruce ‘Roo’ Yardley, Graeme Wood and Rick Darling, Callen claimed three for 83 and three for 108, bowling first change behind Jeff Thomson and Wayne Clark in the first innings and opening with Clark in the second after Thomson broke down.

Callen possessed a lovely side-on, rocking action, and his victims in his solo Test included Gundappa Viswanath, Dilip Vengsarkar and Sunil Gavaskar, three of India’s finest.

Despite touring the West Indies in 1978 and Pakistan in 1982–83, he did not play another international. He even took himself off to South Africa in 1985–86 where he returned to first-class cricket after recovering from knee surgery. His club side won the Boland Club Championship and Boland won South Africa’s Division Two Castle Bowl title. So good was his form that he was almost called up into the rebel tour by Kim Hughes’ rebel Australians.

A journeyman cricketer, he played with a host of clubs, including English minor county and representative league XIs. On one notable occasion at Taunton, playing for Northumberland, he trapped West Indian great Viv Richards lbw, the wicket of his life. ‘Viv had flicked the three previous deliveries into the advertising hoardings at square leg and went for it again. It jagged and caught him in front.’

At Jesmond in the north, he hit the top of off stump so hard one day that the bail flew over the fence and into the local cemetery on the full.

Wherever he went his nickname followed him and even in retirement he still answers more to Mad-dog than his Christian name of Ian.

‘We were up in Shepparton for a pre-season weekend and were partying pretty hard,’ said Callen, then with Carlton, the first of his four major Melbourne clubs.

‘Geoff Measom was behind the bar and showing a deal of expertise with the old beer gun, pouring them like he’d been doing it all his life. I kept asking him if I could have a go too and finally, very reluctantly, he gave it up and I immediately squirted him right between the eyes.

‘ “I knew you were going to do that, you bloody Mad-dog,” he said.’

Tall, spindly, susceptible to injury and occasionally not as focused as his captains desired, Callen had an enviable strike-rate with Victoria of forty-nine balls per wicket.

One New Year’s Day game in Melbourne he bowled two of the widest wides that would have made even Johnny Watkins blush. ‘I tried to swing one away and it ended up at gully, so I thought I’d try the other way and it went straight to fine leg. I don’t think either ball landed on the wicket. “Geesuz Christ Callen, what were you up to last night [on New Year’s eve]?” asked one of the boys. Funnily enough, on this occasion I actually hadn’t had a drink!’

Callen once missed a Melbourne District first XI final because he ignored captain-coach Keith Stackpole’s edict not to play with his journalist mates in a mid-week final for the Plastic XI. ‘I’d played all year and I didn’t want to let anyone down,’ he said.

Callen was always in the head­lines, from ‘Mankading’ Collingwood’s David Emerson in a final as he backed up too far to throwing his bowling marker out of the ground after a spate of no-balls – ‘I wasn’t doing any good with it, so felt I didn’t need it anymore anyway.’

He was a two-time premiership player, with Carlton in 1980–81 and Northcote in 1986–87. Having led a subbies premiership at Box Hill, Callen was thirty-nine when he played his last game for Northcote against Carlton, with whom he then coached for the next three years.

He regrets little about his career, except for when he abused a spec­tator at Doncaster, was reported and subsequently suspended. ‘I told him to go and get %#*&ed. I think I got two matches, but it fired me up. I took a hat-trick in the same game.’

Most wickets per Test … by average
	Wickets	Matches	Average per match
C S ‘Father’ Marriott (E, 1933)	11	1	11
C Aubrey Smith (E, 1888)	7	1	7
Pat Cummins (A, 2011–12)	7	1	7
Thomas Kendall (A, 1876–77)	14	2	7
Fred Martin (E, 1890–91)	14	2	7
Douglas Carr (E, 1909)	7	1	7
Bill Ashley (RSA, 1888)	7	1	7
Sydney Barnes (E, 1901–13)	189	27	7
Jack Ferris (A, 1886–91)	61	9	6.77
H V ‘Ranji’ Hordern (A, 1910–11)	46	7	6.5
Jason Krejza (A, 2008)	13	2	6.5
Tom Richardson (E, 1893–97)	88	14	6.28
George Bissett (RSA, 1927)	25	4	6.25
George Lohmann (E, 1886–96)	112	18	6.22
Alex Kennedy (E, 1922)	31	5	6.2
Muthiah Muralidaran (SL, 1992–2010)	800	133	6.01
Kyle Abbott (RSA, 2012–13)	12	2	6
Harold Butler (E, 1947)	12	2	6
Arnold Warren (E, 1905)	6	1	6
H I ‘Sailor’ Young (E, 1899)	12	2	6
James Tredwell (E, 2009)	6	1	6
Saliya Ahangama (SL, 1985)	18	3	6
James Faulkner (A, 2013)	6	1	6
Mick Malone (A, 1977)	6	1	6
Ian Callen (A, 1977–78)	6	1	6
Andre Adams (NZ, 2001)	6	1	6
Len Johnson (A, 1947–48)	6	1	6
H D ‘Hopper’ Read (E, 1935)	6	1	6
A = Australia, E = England, NZ = New Zealand, RSA = Republic of South Africa, SL = Sri Lanka
Other Australians:
C T B Turner (1886–95)	101	17	5.94
Clarrie Grimmett (1924–36)	216	37	5.83
Jack Saunders (1901–08)	79	14	5.64
Alec Hurwood (1930)	11	2	5.50

MAD-DOG: Ian Callen took six wickets in his only Test

***

Pride of the west

For more than twenty-five years, Wally Wellham was one of Sydney grade cricket’s finest and most prolific bowlers, yet he represented New South Wales in only one season, 1959–60, when NSW’s Test regulars including Alan Davidson and Richie Benaud were away in India and Pakistan.

Originally a left-arm swing bowler, he became best known as a highly effective, dipping orthodox spinner à la Bill Johnston. Often he’d open with the new ball and come back later and bowl slow.

Tony Greig thought him so talented that he considered him ‘a walk-up 100 wickets a season man’ on the English county circuit.

When Wellham was young during the Depression, his father decided to move house to find work … and towed their fibro house to the next location. He and his brother Charlie were both opening bowlers and the club decided that they both couldn’t take the new ball, given the presence of frontliners like Davidson and Shield opener Alan Wyatt, so it was decided Wally would bowl spin.

Long-time teammate Bobby Simpson said Wellham was unfortunate to play in an era when finger spinners were often underrated, especially when compared with their wrist-spinning cousins.

‘He was a great talent and the ultimate club man,’ Simpson said. ‘We were chasing a big total one day and I pulled a calf muscle for the only time in my career and called for a runner. Wally beat off all the young ones and came out himself. He was just so keen.’

Ironically, Simpson himself was responsible for limiting Wellham’s representative selections as in 1959–60, when he was playing with Western Australia, he made an unbeaten double century as part of a Shield season in which he averaged 300. Wellham went wicketless and conceded 87 runs – ‘I was at my absolute top then,’ said Simpson.

In all, Wellham gathered a record 684 first-grade wickets with Western Suburbs, including two hat-tricks and a career-best forty-eight wickets at 14.56 in 1958–59. On debut for NSW, aged twenty-seven, he took a ‘six-for’ against Queensland. In all grades he amassed 717 wickets with a best of eight for 33 against Northern District in 1956–57.

Four more wickets were taken at first-grade level during the ‘eclipse’ round in 1977–78, but controversially the game was ruled a ‘no match’ by the NSW grade committee as the two captains Bob Simpson and David Colley – with the consent of the umpires – had moved the tea break forward by half an hour. Officials ruled the captains and the umpires had acted improperly by altering the playing hours without prior permission.

Other than three years schoolteaching in Hay in his late thirties, Wellham played his entire senior career at Westies and retired only because he felt himself becoming a liability in the field. ‘I could still bowl all right,’ he told colleague Max Bonnell in an interview. ‘I always said I’d retire when my knees and legs went on me but they didn’t. I used to drag in my delivery stride instead of jumping up in the air like some bowlers, so I didn’t put too much strain on my legs. I only stopped playing because of my eyes. I couldn’t judge the ball moving towards me. I was batting against Bankstown and they had this big left-armer Graham Pitty. I picked up my bat and the next thing I knew the keeper was saying, “You didn’t see that one, did you Wal?” Then I started misjudging catches in the field. That was it.’

Bonnell later wrote, ‘In the history of Australian cricket, no bowler has performed as well as Wally Wellham, nor sustained his performances over such a lengthy period, without receiving greater recognition from representative selectors.’

Wally’s nephew Dirk Wellham is the only player to captain three different states in the Sheffield Shield.

***

Boundary-less

Victorian opener Paul Hibbert’s first representative century, against Bishen Bedi’s touring Indians in Melbourne in 1977–78, was unique. It did not contain even one boundary.

***

One-sided

Arthur Ashe, the American tennis champion, was a guest at the 1977 Centenary Test in Melbourne. Looking around at the huge stands, all jam-packed, he said, ‘Wow, look at all this gate money. You’ll be doing well from this.’

‘Actually, no,’ said one of the players. ‘We get only a few hundred bucks.’

***

In a league of his own

Jim Higgs was in a league of his own as a No. 11. Bowled at Leicester by the only delivery he faced on Australia’s 1975 tour of England, he says he was a little unlucky as he also batted that summer at Lord’s, only for Gary Gilmour to be dismissed before he’d had a chance to face a ball.

His Test average was 5.5 and his strike-rate 19.

He says he was probably better than that and had once batted at No. 4 for the Kyabram Fire Brigade’s XI.

***

McGrath-like

Ken Eastwood, one of Australia’s one-Test ‘wonders’, is proud to have a superior bowling average, yet a worse batting average than Glenn McGrath.

Eastwood made 5 and 0 opening up in the 1970–71 Ashes decider at Sydney, but took a key wicket of Keith Fletcher with a loopy full toss during a five-over stint which produced one for 21.

‘I was surprised when Ian Chappell threw me the ball [in mid-match],’ Eastwood said, ‘I could bowl a wrong-un and when I bowled it, it spun and looped a bit. To look up at the SCG scoreboard and see K. Eastwood 1-1 was great.’

Eastwood’s averages are 2.50 with the bat and 21 with the ball; McGrath’s 7.36 with the bat and 21.64 with the ball. Between them they played 125 Tests …

***

When your luck is out …

In his maiden internationals opening for England, mature-aged Brian Luckhurst was feeling quite perky with 408 runs in the first four unofficial Tests against the Rest of the World before bagging a pair courtesy of the high-speed South African Mike Procter in the final international at the Oval.

He went and quietly sat by himself in the members, contemplating the injustices of the game when he felt a tap on the shoulder. It was Andy Sandham, the old England No. 1, still fit and jaunty at eighty.

‘Feeling sorry for yourself, son?’ asked Andy.

‘If you think you’re unlucky,’ he continued, ‘then guess what happened to me the last time I was on a pair on this ground …’

Sandham had made a first-innings duck and went out in the second innings determined to make amends. Taking strike, he could hardly see the other end as a third-floor apartment window was open at such an angle to catch the light and beam it straight into his eyes. As the bowler was running in, Sandham pulled away and apologised, pointing at the window. There was quite a delay as the umpires found a policeman who was patrolling around the ground. Grabbing his bike, he cycled to the block of flats. Finally after about ten minutes, the window was shut and play went on – and Sandham still bagged a pair!

SEEN IT ALL: Old campaigner Andy Sandham

***

Remember the Oval?

The Australian scoreline at Old Trafford was a massive 6-645, last man, Bobby Simpson 311, when a Lancastrian member looked up at the players’ balcony and yelled, ‘Declare Simpson, you bastard!’ Leaning over the rail, Australian wicketkeeper Wally Grout calmly replied, ‘What about the Oval, 1938?’

***

Marathon man

During the aforementioned match of tall scores – both sides scored 600-plus – Australia’s finger spinner Tom Veivers created a new Ashes record, sending down 95.1 overs, including fifty-one overs unchanged.

‘One of his most important contributions was that Tom always seemed to be happy and smiling even if things weren’t going too well,’ said ex-Test skipper Richie Benaud. ‘And in days where Test cricket is supposedly such a serious business, this might have seemed flippant to some but it was certainly appreciated by all able to fasten their binoculars onto his ruddy countenance.’

During his Old Trafford marathon, Veivers delivered 571 balls and took three for 155. Only one other, West Indian Sonny Ramadhin, had bowled more balls in a Test innings – 588 against England at Birmingham in 1957.

On the final morning of the game, Simpson handed Veivers the ball at 11 a.m. saying, ‘Tom, just have this over while I change “Garth” [Graham McKenzie] and “Hawkeye” [Neil Hawke] around.’

At 5.15 p.m. and more than fifty overs later, Veivers was still wheeling away. During the day he occasionally passed his captain and muttered, ‘Pretty long one over, isn’t it captain?’ Simpson just laughed.

He said afterwards, ‘Tom’s first over was so good – he could have had Ken Barrington first ball – that I couldn’t take him off.’

***

Fit as …

Bill Lawry and Bob Cowper each made a 5, all run, from an over bowled by Queenslander Tom Veivers at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1963–64.

***

The greatest all-rounder of all

Les Favell loved having West Indian superman Garry Sobers in his team. Batting, bowling or fielding, he was his No. 1 player. ‘He’d open up with me and I’d bowl eight or nine overs and go and have a field,’ Sobers said. ‘A little later on Les would come over and say to the umpire at the other end, “A new bowler coming on: Sobie.”

‘And I’d come and bowl some orthodox spinners.

‘Later again he’d come over and say, “Another new bowler … Sobie again,” and I’d bowl chinaman and google.

‘I was in the game all the time. It was the way I liked to play. I never wanted to be on a cricket field and idle. It was a lot of hard work too, but back then I enjoyed a lot of hard work!’

So hard to detect was his googly, delivered from wide of the crease out of the darkish background of the magnificent Moreton Bay figs at the northern end of Adelaide Oval, that even stumper Barry Jarman couldn’t pick it. In Barry Nicholls’ biography of Jarman, the great Neil Harvey – never stumped in 137 Test innings – once asked Jarman to give him a ‘ding-a-ling’ when a Sobers wrong-un was coming. Jarman told him, sorry, he couldn’t read it either.

In three domestic seasons, Sobers averaged 900 runs and forty-five wickets a season. He was the first to ‘do the double’ of 1000 runs and fifty wickets in his second summer, 1962–63. He was also an outstanding fielder close to the wicket.

Sobers is among an elite band of cricketers to be knighted for their services to cricket. In 2000, he was named one of five Wisden Cricketers of the Century.

Garry Sobers for South Australia
Season	Matches	Batting	Bowling
1961–62	7	573 runs at 44.07	35 wickets at 22
1962–63	10	1006 at 62.87	51 at 26.56
1963–64	9	1128 at 80.57	51 at 28.25
A Sobers-powered South Australia finished third in 1961–62, second in 1962–63 and won the Shield in his third and final season in 1963–64.

STAR IMPORT: West Indian box office hit Garry Sobers in the nets during the second of his three stellar seasons with South Australia

***

That number

Les Favell had raced to 87 at the Adelaide Oval in 1960–61 when NSW captain Richie Benaud passed by. ‘Favelli,’ he said, ‘did you see your score? You’re 87.’

In cricket, the number 87 is known as ‘the Devil’s number’, being 13 shy of 100. Favell replied he didn’t believe in such superstitions – and was promptly caught!

Batting a second time, Favell was about to face the giant Gordon Rorke’s first ball when Benaud again spoke. ‘Hey Favelli, you’re still not off 87 yet!’

Favell’s answer was unprintable – neither kind nor genteel.

He played carefully to the first five or six but then couldn’t help himself when Rorke dropped one short. Les hooked, got a top edge and was caught at square leg by Barry Bates. All the NSW lads thought it was priceless.

***

Fast and furious

Tall, strapping and blond, New South Wales teenager Gordon Rorke could be furiously fast – and erratic – and this day in Melbourne he was both, three of his first four deliveries at Victoria’s opening batsman Allen Aylett disappearing so wide down the leg side that first-year keeper Doug Ford had no chance of cutting any of them off. After four balls, Victoria was 0-12, byes 12.

***

Who remembers Kanpur!

Rorke laughed when he recalled his Test career – ‘It was three wins from three,’ he said, discounting a fourth Test he started in Kanpur (1959), which Australia lost. ‘I was in bed for most of that game, crook,’ he said. ‘I made a duck and bowled only two overs … so I never count that one!’

***

Two hits for his hundred

Queensland legend Wally Grout loved to hit big 6s straight down the ground. It didn’t bother him if boundary riders were patrolling long-on. He’d treat it as part of the challenge and try to clear them.

He was into the ‘nervous 90s’ this day at the Gabba when South Australia reintroduced slow man Mal Hodge in the hope of inducing an outfield catch.

Having looked at the first two deliveries, both innocuous, he lifted the next two high over the head of the outriders straight into the members’ stand. In two hits he’d gone from 90 to 102.

***

Retired ‘tired’

In ten innings as a Brisbane schoolboy one summer, thirteen-year-old Peter Burge hit six centuries, a double 100 and a 99.

The scorebook faithfully recorded the double century with a footnote: ‘Retired tired!’ He’d made his first 100 as a nine-year-old for his school, Buranda Boys.

Later when named for his first overseas tour, to the West Indies in 1955, his father Jack was Australia’s team manager.

***

The next Bradman

From the time fresh-faced sixteen-year-old Ian Craig debuted for Mosman he was being talked up as a boy wonder.

Starting with 34 on debut, he was to make three centuries in his first Sydney grade season, a unique achievement for one so young:

• 106 v. Northern District (in his fifth match)

• 104 v. Balmain

• 104 v. Randwick

By the end of that first season he was representing New South Wales and in another twelve months playing for Australia.

***

He threw his boots away

Bill ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly was an unerringly accurate medium-pace wrist spinner with a gigantic physique, personality and a formidable, fierce competitiveness few could withstand. He nurtured and educated many of the finest cricketers in Sydney and beyond, his dedication and passion when representing his club St George just as unrelenting as if he was wearing a baggy green Australian cap.

His incredible efforts for St George saw him take five or more wickets 104 times and on twenty-seven or more occasions he took ten or more wickets in a match.

Don Bradman rated him the No. 1 bowler of his time. No matter the ground or the grade, Tiger excelled. He hated conceding runs and in addition to all his remarkable first-class and Test solos, he topped the NSW first-grade bowling averages on twelve occasions.

After playing his final Test in Wellington in March 1946, with every intention never to play again (he tossed his boots out the window), the Tiger did return for one final fling late in the 1948–49 summer with St George as it attempted to win its fourth premiership. It was one of the few times he didn’t succeed.

The chart-topping Tiger
The summers Bill ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly topped the Sydney first-grade averages with St George.
Season	Wickets	Average	Stk-rt	Age
1931–32	54	7.88	20	25
1932–33	31	8.38	23	26
1933–34	31	9.11	18	27
1934–35	52	7.67	21	28
1937–38	53	6.77	20	31
1938–39	46	9.89	21	32
1939–40	86	7.74	17	33
1940–41	46	7.67	17	34
1941–42	108	9.00	17	35
1942–43	109	8.60	16	36
1943–44	147	8.20	16	37
1944–45	51	8.30	18	38
Stk-rt = balls per wicket

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An Aussie of sort

A love of acting and mimicking voices of all sorts had its advantages for cricket tragic and Dad’s Army favourite-to-be Bill Pertwee.

One of his first jobs in London was to run the just-established sports department at Burberrys in Haymarket. To encourage interest in the store he had a small scoreboard made to put in the shop window and each half an hour during one of the 1948 Ashes Tests the board would be updated, courtesy of Pertwee, who would ring the grounds direct and in Aussie twang say he was ‘Sime’ from the ‘Australian Cricket Board of Control’ and ‘what, if you don’t mind old boy, is the latest score?’

Very soon, he was being greeted like an old friend and the updated board was a runaway success.

Years later Pertwee played an Aussie in a West End pro­duction of There Goes the Bride and was so convincing that he had visitors from Down Under coming around to the stage door and saying how nice it was to see a fellow Aussie on stage.

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Short stint

Bill Brown had the shortest stint of any Australian captain: less than eight and a half hours for his one and only appearance in the one-off Test against New Zealand on a rain-affected crumbling wicket at the Basin Reserve, Wellington in 1946.

The combined batting time of the two teams was just 518 minutes, Brown having led in place of Don Bradman who didn’t resume his international career until the following Australian summer.

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Darling of the masses

Don Bradman loved to start an innings with a 4, but if he felt there was too much immediate risk, a tuck around the corner for a single was often an option.

Cheered all the way to the wicket in his first Test as Australia’s captain in Melbourne, he noted that the Englishmen had deliberately left a large gap at second slip, in favour of a fieldsman tucked around the corner to stop his glance.

Eyeing the field and particularly noting the gap to first slipsman Walter Hammond’s right hand, Bradman back cut his very first delivery straight through where second slip would have been all the way to the fence. Wicketkeeper Charlie Barnett said the acclamation from the crowd was near deafening. ‘The noise must have been heard in Sydney,’ he said. The Don made a double century.

PEOPLE’S CHAMPION: A Don Bradman image on the front of any Australian newspaper in the ’30s guaranteed a sell-out that day

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He beat the Don

Only one man has a superior Sheffield Shield average to Don Bradman: Dr H O ‘Juja’ Rock, the eagle-eyed New South Welshman whose big-time career was dramatically affected by the war and time taken up developing his own medical practice.

Delivered at Scone hospital by an ex-Australian Test captain Dr H J H ‘Tup’ Scott, Rock possessed prodigious ability and was a schoolboy batting champion at the Kings School before enlisting as a gunner in the Field Artillery and being seriously wounded in action in Northern France. In addition to gunshot wounds to his upper body, he suffered severe cartilage damage to his right knee and was unable to walk a straight line, let alone play a hook shot.

Re-modelling his technique, he became a front-foot, off-side specialist. He always tried to hit two 4s in an over. Opportunities at the highest level were limited and he was not selected until he was twenty-eight. In one game where he batted in the bottom four, he was the only non-Test player in the NSW XI.

Three centuries in his first four games were undeniable proof of his ability, even if he struggled in the field, with his right knee heavily swathed in cotton bandages. His highest score of 235 came against a near-full-strength visiting Victorian XI whose bowlers included Don Blackie, Hunter ‘Stork’ Hendry, Albert ‘Bert’ Hartkopf and Frank Tarrant, among the best never to play Tests.

Representing the Rest of Australia in the 1926 Test trial, Rock was seen as a menace to several of the established Test players and claimed that one even deliberately tried to run him out. ‘The others were worried about their places in the side [touring team] and they wanted me out,’ he said in an interview years later. ‘My mother was watching from the Ladies Stand. [Percy] Hornibrook was over-tossing outside off where I liked them and I was seeing ’em well. I opened with [Warren] Bardsley and he deliberately tried to run me out …’

Having been castled by Jack Gregory for a dozen on the first morning, he needed a big score in the second to remain in contention, only to be beaten in flight by Arthur Mailey. His 35 wasn’t enough to force his way past the contenders into the 1926 touring party and after just two more Shield games, he accepted a position at the Newcastle hospital, ending his first-class career.

Of the statistical quirk that sees him ranked ahead of the Don, Rock said Bradman played more often than him ‘and had more chances to fail’!

Rock’s father, all-rounder Claude Rock also played first-class cricket, with Cambridge University and with his native Tasmania, which he captained. He also made the inaugural first-class 100 for the island state.

RECORDBREAKER: Harry Rock

Rock v. Bradman: Their Sheffield Shield careers
	Matches	Innings	NO	HS
H O Rock	5	7	1	235
D G Bradman	62	95	15	452*
	Runs	Average	100s	Span
H O Rock	711	118.50	3	1924–26
D G Bradman	8926	110.19	36	1927–49
* denotes not out, HS = Highest Score, NO = Not Outs

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Never to be forgotten

There was no chance of anyone forgetting Arthur Mailey’s feat of taking all ten wickets in an innings against Gloucestershire during the 1921 tour. He entitled his 1958 autobiography: 10 for 66 and All That.

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And the winner is …

Two brothers bowling to two other brothers in a Test match … now that’s a rarity, but it has happened at least once, in Bridgetown in the inaugural Test between the West Indies and Pakistan in January 1958.

Denis Atkinson and his younger brother Eric, on debut, opposed two of the Mohammad brothers, Hanif and Wazir late in the match, Hanif the overall winner with an epic matchsaving 337 in sixteen hours.

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Duck season

Bill Johnston was a fine fast bowler, and a great sport. Coming into the second innings of the 1950–51 Adelaide Test, popular Englishman Denis Compton was in the horrors having made 3, 0, 0, 23 and 5. Johnston greeted him with the words, ‘Don’t worry mate, I’ll give you one off the mark.’

He duly delivered a ‘gift,’ a slow medium long hop. Compton relaxed and smashed it as hard as he could – straight to sub fielder Sam Loxton at midwicket. He was out for another duck.

ANOTHER FAILURE: Denis Compton

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One hundred of the best

It was the most famous ‘assist’ of all and allowed Don Bradman to reach his 117th and final century in first-class cricket.

It was the Don’s testimonial game in Melbourne and the great man was on 97 when he struck Bill Johnston hard and high and catchable to deep square leg where Colin McCool was racing to take it.

Yards from the boundary and to the calls of the crowd to drop it, McCool got his hands to the ball, only for it to slip, land on his boot and then carry on into the fence for the 4 the Don needed for three-figures.

The MCG crowd of 50 000-plus roared with delight. Asked years later if he felt McCool had grassed the catch deliberately, Johnston said he never did ask him. ‘But the crowd was sure delighted. It took Don to 101.’

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Ten of the best

Malcolm Perryman, a former Mosman first-grade bowler in the ’30s, took seven wickets in seven deliveries on his way to all ten wickets for just 6, representing Mosman District ‘B’ grade against Neutral Bay Rugby League at Cammeray Park in 1947. The feat was sent to England for inclusion in Wisden.

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Ever so brave

As a teenager, Ken ‘Slasher’ Mackay once took all ten wickets in an innings for 53 and followed with 367 not out, representing Sherwood state school against Virginia state in Brisbane in 1939–40. He’d turned thirty before he first represented Australia and is remembered more for a shot he didn’t play, rather than those he did.

To the last ball of the gripping Adelaide Test in 1960–61 where he and last man Lindsay Kline batted the entire final session to force an extraordinary draw, he deliberately allowed the final bouncing ball from expressman Wes Hall to hit him on the upper body, rather than risk using his bat and offering a popped-up catch to the waiting short leg fielders.

The pair survived for 109 minutes after all had seemed lost.

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Symmetry

In between a duck on his debut and a duck on his farewell, ‘Patsy’ Hendren made 170 centuries.

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Bankrupting his own benefit

Few Golden Age all-rounders had the record or the mercurial temperament of globetrotting Albert Trott who forsake a promising Australian career to play professionally in England.

His all-round deeds became legend at the home of cricket, Lord’s, where Middlesex were based. In all, he made in excess of 10 000 first-class runs and took almost 1700 wickets.

In 1907, he bankrupted his own benefit match, taking seven for 20 against Somerset and finishing the match by early afternoon on the third day, a Wednesday. Included in his haul were four wickets in four balls and later, three in three – just when morning workers had been preparing to come to the cricket to support him and watch what had been shaping up as an exciting finish …