Clem Hill's Reminiscences

he hit hard past mid-on to the chains, the third he pushed through the covers to the boundary, and the fifth – a fast yorker dead on the middle stump – he banged around to the square-leg boundary. Hirst turned to me in despair and asked, ‘What am I to do with the next?’ I replied, ‘Try a wide on him.’ And it would have been a wide if Trumper had not chased it. No batsmen could force a yorker away as confidently as Trumper could. Most of us were content to stay at home and take care not to be bowled, but he treated such a delivery almost as if it was off the wicket. In a match in Sydney in 1903, Rhodes and Arnold had the side tied up. Trumper made the bowlers look cheap. He made 185 not out, and that, I think, was his greatest innings. One effort which ran it very close was 74 on a sticky wicket in Melbourne in the second Test match the same year. Australia made 122, Rhodes establishing a Test match record by getting seven for 56 and eight for 68. And yet Rhodes was afraid to bowl at Trumper, and kept pitching the ball wide of the off stump. Can any cricketer who has played in Test matches remember a bowler of class on a wicket which suited him being afraid to bowl at the batsman? Couldn’t score if clergymen about Trumper could do anything at any time. All bowling came alike to him, and he was just as likely to get a couple of fours off the first two balls of the day as off the last two. His Third English Tour 68 Trumper (piano) and Hill entertaining in London, 1902