All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

102 Langdon, the Gloucestershire opener, who had been run out early on. His all-ten was the second for Somerset and the first at Worcester. And long- serving umpire John Moss had seen his third all-ten, having previously stood whilst Trott and Fielder performed the feat. Uniquely, on the same day, less than 100 miles away at Cardiff, Billy Bestwick was also taking his all-ten. With due deference to social status the headline in The Times read ‘TEN WICKETS IN AN INNINGS. MR JC WHITE AND BESTWICK’ Somerset’s second innings 364 was dominated by a brilliant 163 by the ever-elegant forty-year-old amateur Randall Johnson. Aged 29, medium pacer Charles Tarbox was in his debut season. He hadn’t even bowled in Somerset’s first innings, but this time he took seven for 55, improving on his previous best of two for 27. Worcestershire’s target was tough: 365 in 280 minutes. At 199 for one they had a chance. However apart from Bowley (99) and Pearson (80), nobody else did much and they lost by 83 runs, Robson and White, five for 99 in 47 overs, sharing the bowling and the wickets. White was the first bowler to take 15 wickets in a match at Worcester, a feat only repeated there once, by Worcestershire’s Reg Perks in 1937, five days before White at the age of 46 signed off his first-class career with second innings figures of six for 52 against Glamorgan. The last Worcester wicket fell at 6.45 pm. Somerset then had to get to Derby where they were playing the next day, and where coincidentally Bestwick and White would be in opposition. Somerset were in the field again, the apparently inexhaustible Robson and White bowling another 57 overs and dismissing Derbyshire for 155. And even then White didn’t get much of a rest. His batting was improving (he eventually made six first- class centuries), and promoted to number five he was quickly in at 26 for three. Next day he reached 80, at the time his highest first-class score, before he was bowled by Bestwick. He then bowled another 41 overs in taking eight Derbyshire second innings wickets. White was in the middle of a purple patch: 57 wickets in five matches. With England two down against Warwick Armstrong’s rampant Australians, the Test selectors could not ignore such form and White was one of four England debutants in the Third Test at Leeds. Although he took three second innings wickets for only 37, after another defeat the selectors were in no mood for continuity. They used 30 players in the series, and after one match White was out. He did not reappear for seven years, but when he did he performed famously and tirelessly on England’s victorious 1928/29 tour of Australia, with 25 wickets finishing the leading bowler on either side. Nearing 40, White’s remaining Test career was brief and he finished with 49 wickets from 15 matches. A reserved, undemonstrative man it has to be said that he probably wasn’t that popular with team-mates, but neither did he court popularity. He could be sparse in his encouragement of the younger professionals, arguably a failing in someone who captained his county from 1927 to 1931 (and occasionally his country). However, on his return from Australia the people of Taunton lined the streets to welcome their local hero. Jack White