On This Day (2)

It may be blindingly obvious, S, but elucidate please if you can for the benefit of the noncognoscenti

OK Dad!

Hollies was responsible for bowling Don Bradman for a duck in his final Test, thus reducing his average below 100.

Yes, in the last Test at The Oval in August 1948 the Don came into bat with Australia 117-1, having already bowled out England in their first innings for 52, needing 4 to make exactly 7000 runs in his 80th innings (10 of which were not out). However, Hollies, the Warwickshire legspinner, deceived him with a googly second ball. This came on the back of his 173* in the previous Test at Headingley when he and Arthur Morris (who made 196 at The Oval) had carried Australia to an improbable 8-wicket win with over 400 runs being scored on the final day.

The Don's failure did not stop Australia winning the match by an innings and 149 and the series 4-0. Hollies made his Test debut (along with 8 others) this day 75 years ago at the Kensington Oval against the West Indies. Care to guess the other two. The hanging offence is a unique (although off-field) record, I think. The batsman-bowler still holds the record for the fastest fc 50 (in terms of time) in a non-contrived situation.

Hollies' performance at The Oval was no flash in the pan. In the tourists' match at Edgbaston two weeks earlier (which had earned him slection in his only Test of the summer) he had taken 8-107 in the Australian first innings bowling Bradman for 31 and Neil Harvey for 0. Just as at The Oval, this did not stop the tourists from winning the match by 9 wickets, though

Allan D,

How old are you?

Like the rose-red city, half as old as Time (but not the one at Lord's though!).

how do you know so much? any knowledge improvement tips?

PlanetPakistan wrote:how do you know so much? any knowledge improvement tips?

A few reference books and a good browser.

AD, the hanging man, so to speak, was Leslie Hylton of the Windies.

furriner wrote:AD, the hanging man, so to speak, was Leslie Hylton of the Windies.

Yes, Furri, the Jamaican and West Indian fast bowler who made his Test debut 75 years ago today and also toured England in 1939. Although Test cricketers have discovered almost every way to die Hylton, I think, remains the only one to be judicially executed for the murder of his wife in 1955 after he returned from the US after looking for work there and discovered his wife's infidelity.

Riots were provoked when Sir Hugh Foot (brother of UK Labour Party leader, Michael, and later Lord Caradon) the then Governor of Jamaica refused to commute the sentence. Jamaica became internally self-governing the following year under Norman Manley when Hylton might well have received a reprieve.

As there are no takers for the third bowler who made his debut yesterday I may as well reveal him as Cedric Ivan James (aka as "Big Jim") Smith who played for Middlesex between 1934-39 and could be guaranteed to clear the bars at Lord's when he came into bat since he invariably adopted an aggressive approach to the bowlers whatever the state of the game.

In 1935 at Maidstone he reached 50 in 14 minutes but bettered this by 3 minutes at Bristol in 1938 (only Clive Inman's 8 minute 50 for Leicestershire at Trent Bridge in 1965 has bettered this but that was a case where full tosses were provided for him to hit to facilitate a declaration ( this has been subsequently deleted from all cricket records save that of The Guinness Book of Records).

There were 9 debutants altogether for the first Test of England's second tour of the Caribbean - the most I can find for a Test where at least one country was not playing its inaugural Test apart from the 13 debutants in the one-off Test between New Zealand and Australia at Wellington in March 1946 (which was only subsequently awarded Test status). Apart from the three already named they George Carew, Cyril Christiani and Rolph Grant (whose brother, George, captained the side) for the West Indies and Errol Holms (the tourists' vice-captain), Jack Iddon and George Paine for England.

The match itself was unusual in that, although scheduled for four days, it was effectively played over five sessions but still produced a positive outcome thanks to two innings' declarations by the captains of both sides, the latter one proving extremely generous.

In the dim and distant days of uncovered wickets the rainy season had obviously come early to the Caribbean in 1935 as play was not possible until tea on the second scheduled day of the match (8 January) and with the help of a drying breeze a "sticky dog" was created. The West Indies were bowled out for 102 (Headley 44, Farnes 4-40, Paine 3-14) and in response Bob Wyatt declared the England innings closed at 81-7 (Hammond 43, Hylton 3-8 ). Rain prevented any play until 3:30 on the final day (10 January) and Grant unsuccessfully rejigged the batting order before declaring on 51-6 (Smith 5-16) setting England a modest target of 73 to win but hoping to take advantage of the conditions now a burning sun was making the pitch unpredictable.

In the event despite Martindale taking 5-22 England reached their target in 16.3 overswith 4 wickets to spare with Hammond, batting at 6 in a rejigged batting order, again leading the way with 29*, smiting an enormous six off Martindale for victory. It was the first occasion a Test had been won against a second innings declaration.

Whilst England's first official visit to the Caribbean five years earlier had been a run-fest on both sides this tour set the precedent for aggressive West Indian pace bowling that was to become such a feature of their cricket with Constantine being recalled on his home ground at Port of Spain for the next match (and the remainder of the 4-match series) and Martindale breaking Wyatt's jaw in the final Test at Sabina Park.

Despite England's somewhat contrived victory in the Barbados Test (a victory they were not to achieve there again until the Stewart-Fraser match of 1994) it was the West Indies who ran out 2-1 series winners thanks to some hostile bowling in Trinidad and Sabina Park and a typical Headley innings of 270* at Sabina Park (one of only two centuries in the series, the other being Les Ames' 126, also at Sabina Park).

It was the Windies' first series victory.

The morning of the first (playing) day of the 1st Test of West Indies v. England at Bridgetown also coincided with the birth, a few hundred miles further north, of some obscure singer who would have celebrated his 75th birthday yesterday had he not fallen off the toilet in August 1977. This is a clip dedicated to Bob Wyatt and all those who have been, over the years, at the mercy of the fearsome Windies' pace attack (when it had one):

Today marks the 102nd anniversary of the birth of that fine character actor, who found fame in his mid-50s by playing 'M' in the first 11 Bond films, Bernard Lee. Despite his flat vowels and gruff appearance Lee was not a Northerner, but born in London where he also died, 6 days after his 73rd birthday in January 1981.

In commemoration, rather than post a Bond clip I thought I would post a clip from an equally famous film, which spawned a TV series, over a decade before the first Bond film when he was a lot lower down the ranks but packed a mean punch! It features four fine actors, all, sadly, no longer with us. Apart from Lee there is Joseph Cotten and two cricket fans, Wilfred Hyde-White and the great Trevor Howard who claimed to have seen every ball of the famous drawn Lord's Test between England and the West Indies in 1963 (when England finished 6 runs short of victory with 9 wickets down and Cowdrey, his left arm in plaster after having been fractured by a Wes Hall bouncer earlier in the innings, at the non-striker's end). Howard was obviously "resting" then:

Allan D wrote:

PlanetPakistan wrote:how do you know so much? any knowledge improvement tips?

A few reference books and a good browser.

Aye AD. No real secret, ay? A head for numbers and a passion for reading also helps.

Happy 19th to Miss Lott:



Also happy 48th to former West Indies captain, Richie Richardson. Don't think he's made a music video, though.