All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

109 in 1926 would give the popular Mills greater opportunities and, for the first time in a career that started in 1902, he took 100 wickets in a season. After his earlier all-ten White had now also been part of one twice, and all in the same season, a ‘feat’ nobody else has ever emulated. And six other members of the Somerset side had been playing three weeks before when Rushby took his all-ten against them. Gloucestershire topped the Somerset score by 36, Edgar Barnett (95) making the highest score of his 64-match career. Sadly he died of meningitis the following January aged 37 and did not live to see the success achieved for county and country by his nephew Charlie. Somerset replied with 240 (Parker three for 78), MacBryan (49) top scoring again. Like Parker, he played just one Test – against South Africa in 1924. Parker at least got to bat and bowl. In a rain-affected game MacBryan, a small, neat batsman, particularly strong off the back foot, did neither, although he did field. He died in 1983 aged nearly 91, at the time England’s oldest surviving Test cricketer. Gloucestershire were left a tricky 205 to win on a pitch affected by overnight rain. Recovering from 65 for five to 202 when the eighth wicket fell, they looked just about home. However, number ten Parker then managed to get run out for a duck, still leaving three to get! Fortunately history does not record Parker’s words on his return to the pavilion. Smith however (a chanceless 62 not out) was still there to get the job done. It is interesting to note that play was apparently extended past half past six in order to get a result. Parker had improved on his previous best figures, nine for 35 against Leicestershire the previous season, and the following year he would famously take nine for 36 against Yorkshire in his benefit match, hitting the stumps with five successive balls, although unfortunately the second was a no-ball (the only one he bowled in his 10.2 overs!). Three years later he would take 17 for 56 against Essex at the Wagon Works Ground, Gloucester, still the best ever match figures for Gloucestershire, and if Jack Russell hadn’t been run out in the first innings it might have been another all-ten. Parker would eventually take exactly 300 wickets against Somerset, including five (or more) wickets in an innings no fewer than 30 times. Somerset would have some measure of revenge at Bristol in 1923 when they batted first and made 532 for nine declared while Parker conceded 231 runs for his six wickets. Parker had had decent figures (two Australian wickets for 32 in 28 overs) on his Test debut at Old Trafford in 1921 but that was the end of his England career. By the early 1930s he had support at Gloucestershire from off-spinner Tom Goddard, another bowler who took wickets in vast numbers. Even as Parker approached, and then passed, 50, he still took wickets: 219 in 1931 and over 100 in every succeeding season until 1935 when he finally retired having taken 3,278 wickets. Becoming an umpire, Charlie Parker’s last day on the circuit was also the last day of the 1939 season. It was a famous occasion, Hedley Verity taking seven for 9 at Hove; two great left-arm spinners leaving first-class cricket together. Parker also coached, both for the county and at Cranleigh, where he died in 1959. Charlie Parker