Famous Cricketers No 82 - H.E. 'Tom' Dollery

SEASON’S AVERAGES Batting and Fielding M I NO Runs HS Ave 100 50 Ct St Players v Gentlemen 1 1 1 4 4* - - - 3 - County Championship 25 46 3 1861 144 43.27 4 11 8 - Other Warwicks match 1 1 0 40 40 40.00 - - - - Other match 1 1 0 39 39 39.00 - - - - Season 28 49 4 1944 144 43.20 4 11 11 - Career 166 275 30 8816 177 35.98 19 39 73 - Bowling O M R W County Championship 2.2 1 8 0 Career (6-ball) 6.4 2 } 32 0 (8-ball) 1 0 1947 This should have been Dollery’s season to establish himself in the England team but it coincided with a really bad run of form and he suffered by far the worst full season statistically of his career. The England selectors picked him for the First Test at Trent Bridge against South Africa, but he shaped so badly on his debut that he was discarded after the one chance, and his place in the middle order went to Charles Barnett of Gloucestershire, an opener recalled at the age of thirty-six who played in the next three Tests, (but he didn’t do much better). His old friend and county colleague, Eric Hollies also made his home Test debut in this match, and he did much better, taking five first innings wickets and actually scoring one more run than Dollery in the second innings as he finished with 18 not out and shared in a match saving last wicket stand of 51 with fast bowler Jack Martin of Kent. I bet Tom didn’t hear the last of that for some time! It was tragic that his form deserted him because there was a vacancy in England’s middle order as Joe Hardstaff was “persona non grata” with the authorities and although there were plenty of openers about like Robertson, Place and Brookes, there were no obvious candidates at number five or six. In the lead up to the First Test his form wasn’t too bad but from mid June he hardly played an innings of any significance. MCC chose an experimental team to tour West Indies that winter which included several young hopefuls and fringe players and Dollery would almost certainly have been selected if he had shown anything like his normal form, but he missed out on the chance of a major tour yet again. His poor batting was compounded by Warwickshire’s decision to play him as first choice wicket-keeper, (in order to bolster the batting), from the Northamptonshire match at home at the end of June. He had deputised for Cyril Goodway in the very first game at Northampton when Goodway suffered a poisoned foot and kept the job in the next game at Taunton and obviously did so well that the selectors took note. He hadn’t kept wicket since his qualifying days at Smethwick in the early Thirties, (oddly it was an injured Goodway he had deputised for then), but he took to it like the natural ball player he was and finished with over fifty victims behind the stumps from only half of the county matches. It wasn’t easy keeping to Hollies and Pritchard, in particular, but he did so well that he could have been doing it all his career. He never made the wicket-keeping duties an excuse for his lack of form, (he was selected for England before he took over the gloves), although he did admit to it making him very tired at times, and must have contributed. The real reason was his overuse of the “dab” shot, which he had developed against slow bowlers in particular; this was a sort of half late cut half chop at a ball just passing off-stump, but which was now bringing about his dismissal far too often. Realising the problem he set out to eliminate the shot during the close season and he became even more of an on-side player in the process. Two useful fifties contributed to Warwickshire winning their first two Championship matches, and this was followed by his only century of the season in an unsuccessful attempt at avoiding defeat at the hands of Middlesex in the third game. However, apart from a very good 94 against Yorkshire in late August, he hardly contributed anything else of note with the bat for the rest of the season; his 27