All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

230 Ian Brayshaw Lightly-built and hence nicknamed ‘Sticks’, the competitive Brayshaw was a great team-man and a key member of the Western Australia side that won the Sheffield Shield five times during the 1970s. Born in South Perth in 1942 he had progressed from playing for Perth’s Scotch College and then grade cricket with Claremont Cottesloe, to becoming a state regular in 1965/66. He also spent two seasons with Bacup in the Lancashire League. He was probably unlucky not to have played Test cricket. The Western Australia Cricket Association Ground (the WACA) wasn’t yet the major ground it was to later become. However, change was on the way. It would host its first Test match just over three years later (or maybe its second, a Women’s Test having taken place there in 1958), for which the John Inverarity Stand (originally known as the Test Stand), replacing the 1897 pavilion, was built. Other developments would follow. One constant has been the Fremantle Doctor, the cooling early afternoon breeze from the direction of the port of Fremantle which provides welcome relief from the excessive summer heat, and help to bowlers with the skill to use it. Only two batsmen prospered in Western Australia’s unimpressive first innings: John Inverarity (76 not out in three and a half hours), and Bill Playle (30), both of whom it would be not unfair to call ‘dour’. By the time Inverarity played his last first-class match, in 1985 at the age of 41, he was the highest ever run-scorer in the Sheffield Shield (9,341 runs at 38.44), a record now held by Darren Lehmann. A useful left-arm spinner, unexpectedly in his final season he took as many as 43 wickets. He led Western Australia to four Sheffield Shield wins, and on moving to Adelaide as a deputy headmaster in 1979 played for South Australia for six more seasons. Opener Playle had played eight Tests for New Zealand before moving to Western Australia where he served the State side with some success. Victoria had a strong batting line-up and would have been optimistic of getting a decent first-innings lead as they began their defence of the Shield. Bill Lawry, Ian Redpath, Bob Cowper, Keith Stackpole and Graeme Watson were all Test players and Ken Eastwood would play once three years later; while twelfth man Les Joslin would play his only Test three months later. On the other hand, Western Australia did have two world-class bowlers in the contrasting fast right-arm of Graham McKenzie and slow left-arm of Tony Lock. Between them they would take over 4,000 first-class wickets, including 420 in Tests. Despite the strength of their batting however, Victoria would fail by nine runs to equal Western Australia’s score, but it wasn’t McKenzie and Lock who scuppered their hopes, but 25-year-old Ian Brayshaw. He had played just two full seasons for Western Australia and as he had only taken five wickets in an innings twice, and with only ten expensive wickets in the previous season, his decimation of the Victorian batting came as a bit of a surprise. McKenzie opened the bowling with Jim Hubble. Left- armer Hubble never played Test cricket although he had been chosen to tour South Africa the previous season after only six first-class matches and 20 wickets. Redpath dominated an opening partnership of 22 with Lawry before Brayshaw, coming on first change, picked up Redpath and