Clem Hill's Reminiscences

to stop the ball with, and he should use them. They were not bad judges of the game. Cotter, our fast bowler, was in good form towards the end of the 1905 tour. It is reported that in a match against Middlesex he sent a bail flying 38 yards. Beldam, one of the local players, killed a bird while batting. This recalls an incident in a match with the MCC at Lord’s, while Jones was bowling. The ball knocked over a sparrow. Cries of ‘Kill it, kill it’ arose from the crowd. Somebody went out to the field to put the poor bird out of its misery. As he approached it the sparrow flew away. Such was the merriment among the players and spectators that the game was held up for two minutes. Frank Laver had a bat which we considered had been a good one many years earlier but was now old-fashioned. We decided to give it a decent burial. While he was absent from the dressing room each of us wrote his name, and we forged the signatures of all the old players we could think of under the date 1878. The inscription we wrote was ‘Presented to Frank Laver on the eve of his departure for England with the first Australian cricket team, 1878.’ Then we varnished the bat. Laver enjoyed the joke immensely, and would not part with that bat for love or money. Luck of the toss F.S.Jackson, the English captain, won the toss in each of the Test matches. Only two games were completed, and England won both of them. Australia was undoubtedly weaker in bowling than in the two previous tours. Trumble had dropped out, and Saunders was not with the team. Noble was not the bowler he was in 1902, having lost some of his capacity to make the ball nip off the pitch. This may have been due to some extent to his concentration on batting. He made 2,084 runs – which was the highest number scored by a member of the team that season. Cotter took some time to strike form. He was not played in the second and third Tests. By the time the fifth Test came round he was into his stride, and captured seven wickets in the first innings. In the early part of the season Laver was remarkably successful. On a good wicket he captured 7 for 64 in the first Test, but gradually he lost his terrors for the batsmen. The absence of a left-hand bowler was felt. No team should leave Australia without one, and a couple of left-hand batsmen. A left-arm bowler who may not be a success in Australia is twice as valuable in England, as he is able to spin the ball. Armstrong was easily our best all-rounder, making 2,002 runs, and taking 130 wickets. He received a great deal of barracking for bowling outside the leg stump in the first and third Test matches in an effort to keep the batsmen from scoring quickly. England, by winning the toss every time, got into a strong position and our task was to play for a draw. We succeeded in doing this in the second, third and fifth His Fourth English Tour 79