Clem Hill's Reminiscences

with the Board, including his punch-up with fellow selector Peter McAlister, undermined team confidence, which made it more difficult to cope with the brilliant England opening bowlers Sydney Barnes and Frank Foster. Hill failed to register a single century in 20 innings and his overall average of 28.84 was little better than his Test performances. In 1912-13 Hill bounced back to lead South Australia to its third Sheffield Shield success and regained form with 476 runs at 43.27 from five first-class matches. He was available for only home matches the following season when he appeared just three times for an average of 55.20. At 37 he declared himself unavailable for Australia’s eventually abandoned tour of South Africa in 1914-15 and retired from all cricket. However, there were three brief comebacks, all as captain. In January 1919 Hill led South Australia in the state’s first match to re-establish cricket after World War I. In February 1923 and October 1924, now aged 47, he came out of retirement twice more for testimonial first-class matches for George Giffen in a Shield game at Adelaide Oval, and for Bill Howell at the Sydney Cricket Ground. This was a suitable time to measure Hill’s career and the eminent statistician R.H. Campbell had little trouble declaring him the ‘greatest Australian Test player’ in the Melbourne Sporting Globe and used a graph as supporting evidence. According to Campbell, Sydney supporters would favour Trumper, Melbourne’s Armstrong, and Adelaide’s Hill, but Hill’s supremacy was no hair-breadth affair. Campbell showed that Hill outperformed all his competitors on the basis of average and on aggregates. He designed his graph to show that it was concerned only with innings against major rivals in Australia-England Test matches in which Hill and his particular competitor took part. If, in any match only one of the two batted in an innings, that innings was discarded. The investigation revealed that when Hill’s performances were compared to those of Noble, Trumper, Syd Gregory, Armstrong, Darling and Duff he scored more runs: Hill 2,201 runs, Noble 1,479; Hill 2,170, Trumper 1,961; Hill 1,950, Gregory 1,484; Hill 1,700, Armstrong 1,367; Hill 1,574, Darling 1,227; Hill 1,163, Duff 1,080. Why did the master left-hander make more runs? Test contemporary Hugh Trumble stated that ‘there was no one like Clem Hill to let you see when you were bowling rubbish’. Although there were differences of opinion about his ability on bad wickets, and that he was not in the same class as Trumper or Joe Darling in this respect, he destroyed all but the best bowling on good pitches. Other judges have commented on Hill’s quality. In a long article on Trumper in The Australasian , the former Australian captain Tom Horan (‘Felix’) described a stroke by Hill: I remember once seeing Clem Hill on the MCC ground [Melbourne Cricket Ground] send a perfect length ball from Charlie McLeod like a shot to square leg for four. He stepped back, almost on the wicket, and with the quickness of thought, mind, wrist and bat working in simultaneous accord, the ball was Introducing Clem Hill 10