All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

154 taken all-ten for the Australians at The Oval in 1899, would have noted that his son William was one of them. Clarrie Grimmett was the second highest wicket-taker in Australia in the season (behind O’Reilly), and had dismissed 13 Queenslanders in his previous match, but while Wall created havoc at one end he went wicketless for the first time in the Sheffield Shield for seven years. The match continued to surprise when South Australia went in and by the close they had also been dismissed, with a lead of just one. The damage was mainly done by Howell who took a career-best five for 31 with his off breaks and outshone the great O’Reilly. Wall was not usually expected to get many runs; in 135 first-class innings he made just one fifty, but going in at 77 for eight he made a useful 13 and in partnership with 20-year- old Alan Shepherd just took his side ahead before he was dismissed. In the next over Shepherd, who top scored with 32, then fell to Bradman’s occasional leg spin. Next day, Saturday, the crowd doubled and the match reverted to some sort of normality. New South Wales eventually made 356 second time around, with Wall (two for 91 in 22 overs) performing more modestly. Bradman top scored (obviously not that unusual, he did it in 128 of his 338 innings) with 97 (more unusual, he was dismissed in the 90s only six times). South Australia never really looked like reaching their 356 target. Left- handed opener Jack Nitschke made a dashing 105 in 132 minutes, but nobody else reached forty. Later a very successful racehorse breeder, Nitschke played two Tests and might have played more if Australia had not been so well endowed with batting at the time. He was splendidly christened Homesdale, and also known as ‘Slinger’. This time leg-spinner O’Reilly (five for 56) and left-armer spinner Clement Hill (four for 61) took most of the wickets. Hill shared a famous name but was unrelated to the great pre-war batsman. Finishing top of the season’s averages with 22 wickets at 15.27, like the great O’Reilly he bowled at a brisk pace for a spinner. As in the first innings, Bradman took the last wicket and, perhaps appropriately, his victim was Wall, stumped by Love who was playing his final Shield match (although curiously he played his only Test the following week). Among Bradman’s 36 first-class wickets the name Wall appears three times and he probably qualifies as his ‘rabbit’. To even things up a bit, Wall did dismiss Bradman five times. Wall retired after the end of the 1935/36 season, his 22 wickets that season helping South Australia win the Sheffield Shield for only the second time since the First World War. A school teacher like a number of his team- mates, he was later involved in coaching and cricket administration. Tim Wall died in Adelaide in March 1981 aged nearly 77. He had suffered for some time from Parkinson’s disease. There were suggestions that he had taken his own life, but David Frith points out in Silence of the Heart that his death certificate does not support this. Tim Wall