My new collaborator, The Loins of the Club, has been busy ploughing through more historical Ashes yarns so we can be regaled with some mirthsome miscellany. He's still on the chapter about the Big Ship era and sends me this. He also remembered to sign off properly this time without the need for me to add anything!!!
More about the Big Ship......
He captained Aus in 10 tests v England - won 8 drew 2 with one of the draws (at Manchester) an almost complete wash out.
On the voyage over, to keep to his fighting weight of 22 stone, he joined the crew in the engine room shovelling coal.
In one match, he caused a 'confabulation' when he thought Hobbs should have been given out and wasn't. Hobbs was out two balls later. Typically Surrey.
In another match, when Wooley was making his debut, he made the batsman wait for 15mins before bowling a ball. In those days, the bowler was allowed to warm up whenever he liked, so he went a few strips down and practiced bowling some balls. When they went to the fine leg boundary, the Aus fielders were in no hurry to retrieve and return the ball. Wooley made 8.
He was a good enough cricketer to do the 1000run - 100 wkt double on all 3 of his tours to England. In one, he made 2,000 runs & took 100wkts. The only tourist ever to have done so.
He was athletic enough to take 44 catches in tests, usually at mid off.
He wasn't a fan of the draw, believing that all tests should be played to a finish. In the drawn match at the Oval, he took himself out to the outfield and picked up a newspaper that had blown on to the field and started reading it. He said "wanted to know who we were playing".
When the England captain - the hon. Mr. A. Tennyson - declared, he stayed out on the pitch. The rules of the series stated that after rain, the batting side could not declare within 1hr 30 of the close. The hon. Tennyson was unaware of that, so everyone had to come out again. In doing so, he embarrassed the English establishment who were shocked that an uncouth, semi (state at that) educated colonial should know the rules better than their own chaps. The umpires further compounded the embarrassment by allowing him to resume bowling on restart. This meant he bowled two overs in a row.
On retiring he regularly wrote for the press, saying that Larwood and O'Reilly couldn't bowl and Bradman couldn't bat. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr
Bring back the draw and the back foot no ball.
If I don't see you before, have a Merry pinning a Jewish carpenter to a tree time and a Happy New hurtling 586, 920,000 miles or so around the sun.
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