Clem Hill's Reminiscences

finger. She had punctured it with a sharp pencil which she was using to record the runs in her scoring book. She was too excited to write down the last few runs. Our scorer told us that he had trouble putting the figures in the squares. I don’t suppose the mourning cards were distributed. 16 Victor Trumper superstitious of clergymen: blamed them if he didn’t score Many cricketers are superstitious and Victor Trumper was one of them. He believed that he would not succeed if he saw clergymen while going in to bat. Entertaining sidelights on the peerless batsman are given by Clem Hill in this article. Trumper was a quick dresser – so quick that he was on his way back to his hotel before his team-mates had started to change. And untidy! He would throw his clothes into his cricketing bag, push them down with his foot if it would not close, and not look at them again until next day. Victor Trumper was the outstanding batsmen on both sides in the 1902 tour of England by the Australian Eleven. He went to the wickets 53 times and never failed to score. He made 2570 runs and that in a wet year. The nearest run getter to him on our side had 1,614 to his credit. His was the highest total made in a season in England up to that time. He was a batsman by instinct, and I consider him the greatest of all time. Trumper was a most loving and unassuming champion. He never realised what a great batsman he was. There were many who were his equal on fast and fiery wickets, but he stood out as the champion on all sorts of wickets, especially sticky ones. No batsman ever played more for his side. In a Test at Manchester he had made a century before lunch. On resuming he was promptly dismissed. He was disconsolate. ‘I don’t know how it is,’ he said, ‘that just when we want runs, I can’t make them. I never seem to do any good for the side.’ He made 11 centuries that season and his top score was 128, but he could have made more runs. He threw his wicket away in order to give other batsmen a chance to have a hit. Of course he never did this in Tests, and only in county fixtures when his side was safe. 43 He took risks and gave the bowlers a chance. Nobody annoyed him more than the batsman who scratched around and scored from bad strokes. He was very generous to his opponents. The Englishmen would leap for joy when he was dismissed, whether he had made a duck or 100. While sorry that they would no longer be able to watch the excellence of his strokes they were glad to see the last of him. All English players, but especially Ranjitsinhji, MacLaren, and Warner, had great admiration for him. He used to go for the bowlers in a most cavalier fashion. Hirst had been hailed in England as a demon bowler. He came up against Trumper in a Test match. The first ball was square cut for four. The next, which was the same kind of ball, His Third English Tour 67 43 This comment almost sounds like a contradiction.