Famous Cricketers No 81 - C.W.L.Parker

the stumps with five consecutive balls, one of which was a no-ball. He did the hat trick six times including twice in the same match against Middlesex at Bristol in 1924. At Gloucester, against Essex in 1925, he had analyses of 9 for 44 and 8 for 12 and he followed this up with 9 for 118 against Surrey in the next match, a bag of 26 wickets in three consecutive innings, constituting a world record. On his home wickets at Bristol, Cheltenham and Gloucester he was deadly, spinning team after team to destruction assisted, after 1924, by the wonderful slip catching of Walter Hammond, who held more than 230 catches off Parker’s bowling in Gloucestershire matches. Parker’s benefit season of 1922 was memorable, not only because he netted £1,075, but also because he took 222 wickets and was named as one of Wisden’ s Five Cricketers of the Year. The writer comments that Parker was not strictly speaking a slow bowler but rather a bowler on the slow side of medium. He also rightly states that Parker suffered from playing in a weak batting side. No matter how cheaply he bowled opponents out it seldom led to a Gloucestershire victory. In the match with Yorkshire mentioned above Gloucestershire managed to lose by four wickets despite Parker taking 9 for 36 in Yorkshire’s first innings. Parker’s best analyis was 10 for 79 against Somerset in 1921, a season in which he played in his only Test Match, the Fourth Test against Australia at Old Trafford. In a match which was ruined by rain he took 2 for 32 in Australia’s only innings, bowling 28 overs as the tourists batted out the match. He played four times for the Players against the Gentlemen, though never at Lord’s, and he was chosen twice for South of England against the Australians. He never went on an official MCC tour - his only trip abroad was as a member of Mr J.B.Joel’s team that went to South Africa in 1924/25. On that tour Parker played in five unofficial Tests against South Africa taking eleven wickets. By any standards this represents a poor return at representative level for a bowler of his talents and it is possible to see the work of some malevolent hand opposing his selection. Parker had no doubts as to whom the malevolent hand belonged, none other than Sir Pelham Warner, doyen of English cricket and a man who did not take kindly to Parker’s sometimes blunt manner. In his fascinating book Cricket’s Unholy Trinity , David Foot describes how Parker confronted Warner in a lift following Gloucestershire’s annual dinner in 1926. Seizing Warner by the lapels of his suit he accused him of ruining his Test career. Reg Sinfield managed to intervene to prevent blows being struck. The incident had repercussions during the 1926 Test series. Warner was Chairman of Selectors this year and Parker was summoned to Leeds for the third Test against Australia. The wicket, by all accounts, was ideally suited to his type of bowling. Arthur Carr, the captain won the toss, put Australia in and then left Parker out! Or did he? Warner has stated that Carr took the team he wanted out on to the field with him but that is not quite how Carr remembered it. There is no doubt who Parker thought was to blame. In 1930 Parker played in the famous tied match between Gloucestershire and the Australians, taking 7 for 54 and dismissing Don Bradman in both innings. The following season, at the age of 46, he took 219 first-class wickets. He finally retired in 1935, aged 51, probably ruing the fact that the new lbw law which had come into force would have brought many more wickets for the “arm ball” coming into the batsman’s pads which up until then had been given not out. As a batsman Parker was right-handed and often a more than useful performer scoring over 8,000 runs in his career. At Leicester in 1921 he made the highest of his ten fifties, an innings of 82 complementing the twelve wickets he took in the match. He took 243 first-class catches. After his retirement Parker stood from 1936 to 1939 as a first-class umpire. After the Second World War he returned for a while to Gloucestershire as a coach before accepting a post of coach at Cranleigh School in Surrey. He died at Cranleigh on 11th July 1959 at the age of 76. His wife had predeceased him and he was survived by his son and daughter. 4