All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

204 Ken Smales is what happened on the second day, although not before a considerable fight by Gloucestershire’s batsmen. The weather had improved and the Monday crowd numbered some two thousand. Knightley-Smith went quickly, caught by wicketkeeper Eddie Rowe. A couple more wickets and Notts would be through to a very weak tail which comprised three ‘batsmen’, Wells, Cook and Yorkshireman Frank McHugh, who, in a combined career total of 903 first-class matches, would accumulate one fifty between them. However before Smales could get at them, Arthur Milton and John Mortimore came together in a sixth wicket partnership of 103 that contributed considerably to eventual victory. Once Mortimore went however the Gloucestershire tail didn’t disappoint, Smales sweeping it away without help from the field while Milton, whose Test debut was still two years away, hit ten fours in his undefeated 70. Smales, flighting the ball skilfully, had bowled with great accuracy, conceding fewer than two runs an over. Although the slowish pitch didn’t help him the dangerous Dooland might have prevented his all-ten, but he had a number of catches dropped. After Giffen, Mailey and Graveney, Smales had become the fourth bowler to pay 66 runs for his all-ten. There was however to be no happy ending for Smales as, despite a classy 70 by Simpson, Notts failed again and Gloucestershire completed victory before lunch on the third day. The match had marked the first-class debut, with pen and pencil, for the Stroud News , of a young Frank Keating, who would later become an eminent and much-admired sports journalist. He later recalled Jack Crapp’s less-than-complimentary comments about the pitch. Smales must have thought that he was in line for Brylcreem’s £100 award for the best bowling of the season. It was not to be. Tony Lock and then Jim Laker pipped him; but he didn’t lose out too much because wisely he had covered himself at the bookmakers. Remarkably, umpires Laurie Gray and Kenneth McCanlis had also stood together the previous month when Jim Laker had rolled over the Australians. And having watched Trevor Bailey’s all-ten in 1949, McCanlis, in his last Championship season, had completed his hat-trick. Sixty years later Frank McHugh recalled that on seeing him come in at number eleven Smales had told him that he realised that he had a reasonable chance of getting all-ten. It was a shrewd judgement: McHugh would finish his 95-match career with significantly fewer runs, just 179 at an average of 2.63, than his 276 wickets. As McHugh took eight wickets in the match with his fast-medium bowling and Freddie Stocks the only wicket that fell in Gloucestershire’s second innings, 19 of the 31 wickets that fell in the match were taken by Yorkshire exiles. In his next match, back in his own county, McHugh had match figures of eleven for 112. Remarkably, struck down by tuberculosis, it was to be his last first-class match. As he also made a pair and was part of a Bob Appleyard hat-trick, it was a final match to remember. Smales only took 28 wickets in his next 19 matches but then in the return with Gloucestershire at Trent Bridge he had another inspired spell, taking seven for 48 in the visitors’ first innings of a match that was eventually drawn.