Tag: Billy Murdoch

W is for Winners

An all time XI of players whose given names begin with W, a very detailed honourable mentions section and a photo gallery.

Today I present an all time XI of players whose given names begin with W and a detailed honourable mentions section, as well as my usual photo gallery.

THE XI IN BATTING ORDER

  1. William Morris ‘Bill’ Lawry (Australia, left handed opening batter). He averaged 47 with the bat in test cricket.
  2. William Harold ‘Bill’ Ponsford (Australia, right handed opening batter). Until Brian Lara came along only one player had achieved two first class scores in excess of 400, Ponsford, with 429 against Tasmania in 1922 and 437 against Queensland in 1927. In December of 1927 he became the only player ever to score 1,000 first class runs in a calendar month outside of England, with a sequence of 1,146 runs in five innings. His test record was not quite so outstanding, but even at that level he averaged 48, which included centuries in each of his first two test matches and centuries in each of his last two.
  3. *WG Grace (England, right handed batter, right arm bowler of various styles, captain). Cricket’s first superstar, and in his best decade, the 1870s, he averaged 49 with the bat at a time when the best of the rest were just about managing 25. Only one other person in cricket history ever sustained being twice as prolific as the best of the rest over a long period – Bradman.
  4. Wally Hammond (England, right handed batter, right arm medium-fast bowler). He scored 7,249 runs at 58.45, including 905 at 113.125 in the 1928-9 Ashes.
  5. +William Lloyd ‘Billy’ Murdoch (Australia, right handed batter, wicket keeper). Australia’s best batter in the earliest years of test cricket, and a fine enough keeper that FR Spofforth missed the first ever test match because he initially didn’t believe that any keeper other than Murdoch could handle his bowling.
  6. Warwick Armstrong (Australia, right handed batter, leg spinner). A fine all round cricketer whose feats included scoring over 2,000 runs and taking over 100 wickets in first class matches on the 1905 tour of England. 16 years later he almost captained an undefeated side, the only loss they sustained on the tour coming at the hands of ‘an England XI’ assembled by AC MacLaren.
  7. Willie ‘Billy’ Bates (England, right handed batter, off spinner). The first England bowler ever to take a test hat trick, part of a match performance in which he scored a 50 and took seven wickets in each Australian innings.
  8. Wasim Akram (Pakistan, left arm fast bowler, left handed batter). One of the greatest ever.
  9. William Joseph ‘Bill’ O’Reilly (Australia, leg spinner, left handed batter). Only one batter among those he came up against in the course of his career could truly claim to have his measure: Don Bradman.
  10. William Arras ‘Bill’ Johnston (Australia, left arm fast medium bowler, left arm orthodox spinner, left handed batter). The third essential member of Australia’s immediate post WWII bowling attack after Lindwall and Miller, as well as being two types of bowler in one he was possessed of great stamina – it was not unknown for him to go straight from spinning the old ball to swinging the new one. Three times he was Australia’s leading wicket taker in Ashes series. In England in 1953, with the active connivance of some his team mates, who got themselves out in some of the later matches to help engineer the outcome, he became only the second player to average 100+ for an English first class season (17 innings, 16 not outs, 102 runs, average 102.00) after Bradman in 1938 (the Don achieved his average of 115.66 for that season without any such shenanigans going on).
  11. Waqar Younis (Pakistan, right arm fast bowler, right handed batter). A superb practitioner, and one who regularly shared the new ball with Wasim Akram.

This side has a powerful batting line up, and a wealth of bowling options. The only regular type of bowling that is not featured is left arm wrist spin. The front five of Younis, Akram, Johnston, O’Reilly and Bates are formidable in their own right, and in the unlikely event that they prove insufficient there are Armstrong, Grace and Hammond as back up options.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

I start this section with a paragraph devoted to my most notable omission…

WILFRED RHODES

One of the most extraordinary performers in the history of cricket, with a remarkable five-phase playing career – specialist left arm spinner, all rounder, specialist batter, all rounder, specialist left arm spinner. The trouble is that brilliant as he was as an all rounder at county level his England career was almost exclusively spent either as specialist bowler (early and late periods) or as a specialist batter (in the run up to WWI). His batting would not warrant selection as a specialist and if I pick him as a specialist bowler I would have to leave out Johnston, who offers me two bowling options in one and had an outstanding test record.

OTHER HONOURABLE MENTIONS

The opening slots were rich in potential candidates. Lawry’s only rival for the left handed openers slot was Warren Bardsley, the first batter ever to score twin centuries in a test match and possessor of a fine overall test record, as well as being Australia’s leading scorer of first class centuries until Bradman came along, more than half of those tons having come in England.

Ponsford was rivalled for the right handers opening slot by two other Williams who were generally known as Bill, WA Brown and WM Woodfull. Woodfull in particular is unlucky to miss out, while Brown also had a fine record.

I regard WG Grace as an essential pick and my reckoning is that he could handle first drop, though he did prefer to open. Two regular number threes who thus miss out are William Gunn, the Gunn of Gunn & Moore, whose test record did not live up to his superb first class record and William Scotton, also of Nottinghamshire, whose ability to bat for long periods of time came at the expense of run scoring. William John ‘Bill’ Edrich was another who might have had this slot, averaging 40 in test cricket in spite of losing six prime years to WWII. WG ‘Billy’ Quaife had a splendid record for Warwickshire but his seven tests were disappointing. Wajahatullah Wasti of Pakistan once scored twin tons in a test match but did little else at that level. William Yardley has a place in the record books – in 1870 he became the first player ever to score a century in the Varsity Match.

Among the all rounders I could not accommodate were Wasim Raja, WE ‘Bill’ Alley, Wanindu Hasaranga de Silva, Wilf Flowers and William ‘Billy’ Barnes.

My decision to entrust the gloves to Murdoch meant that three very accomplished keepers, Wriddhiman Saha of India, Wasim Bari of Pakistan, and Arthur Theodore Wallace ‘Wally’ Grout of Australia missed out.

WH ‘Bill’ Lockwood was a fine bowling all rounder, and possibly the pioneer of the slower ball, but not a serious rival to Akram for the number eight slot. A number of Williams, all known as Bill, were fine quick bowlers: Whitty, Voce, Bowes, Copson, Andrews and Bestwick among them. Two Williams known by their full first names, Lillywhite and Mycroft, were both great bowlers kept out by the immense strength in depth available for this squad. Wes Hall and Wayne Daniel were two of the many superb quicks to come from the coral island of Barbados, and both can be considered unlucky to miss out. Walter Mead, a bowler of mixed spin for Essex who claimed a 17 wicket match haul against the 1893 Australians and had a magnificent first class record was the biggest miss in the spin bowling department.

In a few years time there may be a second WG in the line up – WG Jacks of England, an attacking batter and a capable off spinner who is in the process of establishing himself in international cricket.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

Special Post: Oval and Vauxhall

A piece principally about Ashes moments at the Oval cricket ground, with an introductory mention of the history of the two stations that serve it.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the latest post in my series “London Station by Station”. I hope you will enjoy this post and that some of you will be encouraged to share it.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE GAS HOLDERS

I am treating these two stations together because they are at opposite ends of the Oval cricket ground. Oval was one of the original six stations of the City and South London Railway, the world’s first deep-level tube railway, which opened in 1890. Vauxhall only opened as an underground station in 1971, part of the newest section of the Victoria line, but is also a main-line railway station and would have opened in that capacity long before Oval.

Today is the Saturday of the Oval test, by tradition the last of the summer. At the moment things are not looking rosy for England, but more spectacular turnarounds have been achieved (bowled at for 15 in 1st dig and won by 155 runs a day and a half later – Hampshire v Warwickshire 1922, 523-4D in 1st dig and beaten by ten wickets two days later – Warwickshire v Lancashire 1982 to give but two examples). The Oval in it’s long and illustrious history has seen some of test cricket’s greatest moments:

1880: 1st test match on English soil – England won by five wickets, Billy Murdoch of Australia won a sovereign from ‘W G’ by topping his 152 in the first innings by a single run.

1882: the original ‘Ashes’ match – the term came from a joke obituary penned after this game by Reginald Shirley Brooks. Australia won by 7 runs, England needing a mere 85 to secure the victory were mown down by Fred Spofforth for 77.

1886: A triumph for England, with W G Grace running up 170, at the time the highest test score by an England batsman. Immediately before the fall of the first England wicket the scoreboard nicely indicated the difference in approach between Grace and his opening partner William Scotton (Notts): Batsman no 1: 134           Batsman no 2: 34

1902: Jessop’s Match – England needing 263 in the final innings were 48-5 and in the last-chance saloon with the tables being mopped when Jessop arrived at the crease. He scored 104 in 77 minutes, and so inspired the remainder of the English batsmen, that with those two cool Yorkshiremen, Hirst and Rhodes together at the death England sneaked home by one wicket.

1926: England’s first post World ward I Ashes win, secured by the batting of Sutcliffe (161) and Hobbs (100) and the bowling of young firebrand Larwood and old sage Rhodes – yes the very same Rhodes who was there at the death 24 years earlier.

1938: The biggest margin of victory in test history – England win by an innings and 579. Australia batted without opener Jack Fingleton and even more crucially no 3 Don Bradman in either innings (it was only confirmation that the latter would not be batting that induced England skipper Hammond to declare at 903-7)

1948: Donald Bradman’s farewell to test cricket – a single boundary would have guaranteed him a three figure batting average, but he failed to pick Eric Hollies’ googly, collecting a second-ball duck and finishing wit a final average of 99.94 – still almost 40 runs an innings better than the next best.

1953: England reclaim the Ashes they lost in 1934 with Denis Compton making the winning hit.

1968: A South-African born batsman scores a crucial 158, and then when it looks like England might be baulked by the weather secures a crucial breakthrough with the ball, exposing the Australian tail to the combination of Derek Underwood and a rain affected pitch. This as not sufficient to earn Basil D’Oliveira an immediate place on that winter’s tour of his native land, and the subsequent behaviour of the South African government when he is named as a replacement for Tom Cartwright (offically injured, unoffically unwilling to tour South Africa) sets off a chain of events that will leave South Africa in the sporting wilderness for almost quarter of a century.

1975: Australia 532-9D, England 191 – England in the mire … but a fighting effort all the way down the line in the second innings, Bob Woolmer leading the way with 149 sees England make 538 in the second innings and Australia have to settle for the draw (enough for them to win the series 1-0).

1985: England need only a draw to retain the Ashes, and a second-wicket stand of 351 between Graham Gooch (196) and David Gower (157) gives them a position of dominance they never relinquish, although a collapse, so typical of England in the 1980s and 90s sees that high-water mark of 371-1 turn into 464 all out. Australia’s final surrender is tame indeed, all out for 241 and 129 to lose by an innings and 94, with only Greg Ritchie’s 1st innings 64 worthy of any credit.

2005: For the second time in Oval history an innings of 158 by a South-African born batsman will be crucial to the outcome of the match, and unlike in 1968, the series. This innings would see Kevin Peter Pietersen, considered by many at the start of this match as there for a good time rather than a long time, finish the series as its leading run scorer.

2009: A brilliant combined bowling effort from Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann sees Australia all out for 160 after being 72-0 in their first innings, a debut century from Jonathan Trott knocks a few more nails into the coffin, and four more wickets for Swann in the second innings, backed by the other bowlers and by Andrew Flintoff’s last great moment in test cricket – the unassisted run out of Ricky Ponting (not accompanied by the verbal fireworks of Trent Bridge 2005 on this occasion!).

The above was all written without consulting books, but for those who wish to know more about test cricket at this iconic venue, there is a book dedicated to that subject by David Mortimer.

As usual I conclude this post with some map pics…

DSCN4600 DSCN4602