Famous Cricketers No 77 - W.L.Murdoch

Until, and to a large extent during, his first trip to England in 1878 Murdoch’s performances with the bat in first-class cricket were relatively modest but his form in matches against odds during the latter part of the tour and for Albert was clearly good enough to warrant selection irrespective of his wicket-keeping. The 1878 odyssey did more than benefit Murdoch’ s batting technique. With the exception of the Bannerman brothers who toured for fixed sums, the players financed the enterprise themselves and Murdoch’s share of the profit, between £700 and £800, was a useful boost to a young solicitor striving to get established. The 1879/80 season sawMurdoch the unwitting cause of the infamous pitch invasion during the game between New South Wales and Lord Harris’s XI. At the time he was involved with Victorian captain and fellow 1878 tourist Harry Boyle in the arrangements for another tour of England in 1880 which, as it turned out, would suffer considerably from the backlash of the Sydney affair but before arrangements were complete there came near disaster. In December 1879 Murdoch was declared bankrupt with debts of £775. The cause was an unsuccessful shipping speculation – unsuccessful due perhaps more to bad luck than bad judgement as the primary cause seems to have been the sinking of a ship in the South Seas. Undeterred, two days after his financial straits became public knowledge he was playing in the opening fixture of the tour, against XV of Victoria at Melbourne. Thanks to an arrangement whereby he was sponsored by brother Gilbert who pocketed his sibling’s share of the profits (reputedly under £400) and Billy restricted himself to “expenses”, Murdoch not only made the complete 15 month tour, but he returned to Australia firmly established as his country’s finest batsman and much respected captain. Boyle led the side in the first (Australian) leg of the tour but when the team reached Suez en route for England the players elected Murdoch as their leader. He was at the time in no sense the senior member of the party and it says much for all concerned that neither then nor subsequently does there appear to have been any friction between Murdoch and Boyle. Nor does anyone seem to have considered the bankruptcy of any significance. What the modern sporting media would have made of such a state of affairs hardly bears thinking about. Murdoch’s leadership was widely praised and not solely for his captaincy on the field. His relaxed, urbane manner and instinct for man management resulted in a happy, united touring party and this, coupled with an essentially Anglophile outlook, enabled him to establish lasting friendships among people who mattered in English cricket, notably W.G.Grace. Murdoch, Lord Harris and Charles Alcock, who laboured hard to bring the two together, are entitled to much of the credit for smoothing over the residual bad feeling from the Sydney fracas and the subsequent staging of the first Test match on English soil. The symbolic Murdoch/Harris handshake and the Kentish peer’s prophetic dictum “You find the timber and we will find the workmen to build a bridge which will endure forever” marked a turning point in cricket history. It is difficult to imagine his predecessor, the more abrasive David Gregory, achieving the same rapport. Murdoch was released from bankruptcy in 1881 and set up a law practice in Cootamundra, a town destined for greater fame as the birthplace of Sir Donald Bradman. Despite growing business commitments, Murdoch was involved in the organisation of two further tours to England, in 1882 and 1884. Although seemingly less profitable for the players than the two earlier ventures both tours made money and enhanced Murdoch’s reputation as a batsman and as a captain. The return journey in 1884 brought an additional bonus. On the SS Mirzapore Murdoch met and subsequently married Jemima Watson, a lively, artistic, twenty-one-year-old much in demand for shipboard social functions, amateur theatricals etc. She was also the daughter of one of the richest men in Australia. Born in Paisley, Renfrewshire in 1828, the son of a cabinet maker, John Boyd Watson arrived in Sydney with his parents, four brothers and two sisters in 1841. After trying his luck in California in 1850, he returned to Australia in time for the Victoria gold rush and in 1852 made his first of a series 4