Famous Cricketers No 98 - Tom Goddard

THOMAS WILLIAM JOHN GODDARD Thomas William John (Tom) Goddard was born in Gloucester on 1st October 1900. Receiving his first cricket coaching fromArthur Paish, the former Gloucestershire player, he joined Gloucestershire County Cricket Club in 1922, initially as a pace bowler. Standing 6ft 3inches tall, the Gloucestershire authorities saw him as possessing all the necessary attributes of a successful fast bowler. But he was not a conspicuous success as a fast man. Although he took sixty eight Championship wickets in the 1926 season, he managed altogether to take only 153 at an average of 34 runs each in his first six seasons. At the end of the 1927 season the County decided he would not make the grade although he was offered terms for 1928 Goddard felt he was getting nowhere and declined them. He was determined to prove Gloucestershire wrong. Joining the groundstaff at Lord’s and having unlimited opportunities for practice, Goddard started to experiment with off-spin. He had always been able to spin the ball, his long,strong fingers being ideally suited to this form of attack. The presence of three outstanding spin bowlers in the Gloucestershire side, Parker, Dennett and Mills, in the early to mid-Twenties had meant that no attention had been paid to Goddard’s ability as a spinner. But in 1928, the Gloucestershire captain, Beverley Lyon, watched Goddard bowling off-spinners in the Lord’s nets and was so impressed that he persuaded the County to re-engage him as a spinner for the 1929 season. The results were sensational. He took 184 wickets that season at 16 runs apiece including a haul of 9 for 21 at Cheltenham against Cambridge University. His career was well and truly launched. Goddard had already taken one hat-trick as a fast bowler, against Sussex at Eastbourne in 1924. In 1930 he took his first as an off-spinner, against Glamorgan at Swansea. He made his Test match debut that season against the powerful Australian batting side at Old Trafford. He took two wickets for 49 runs in 32 overs, by no means a failure against batsmen of the calibre of Bradman, Woodfull, Ponsford, and McCabe, but he was not chosen for the final Test at Kennington Oval. He might have been excused a sigh of relief as he heard that Australia had notched a total of 695 in their only innings of that match. He did play against the Australians again, though, in what was probably the most exciting match of his career. The game at Bristol between Gloucestershire and the Australians ended in a tie with Goddard taking 7 wickets for 106 in the match including the final wicket, that of P.M.Hornibrook, leg-before-wicket to probably the loudest appeal that even Tom Goddard ever made. It is a minor mystery as to why Goddard played in only eight Test matches in his entire career. He appeared once against Australia in 1930, twice against New Zealand in 1937, three against South Africa in 1938/39 and twice against the West Indies in 1939. In 1937 he bowled England to victory at Old Trafford , taking 6-29 in the second New Zealand innings. At Johannesburg on Boxing Day, 1938, he did the hat trick against South Africa, his victims being A.D.Nourse (caught and bowled), N.Gordon (stumped), and W.W.Wade (bowled). His Test record shows that he took 22 wickets at that level for 26.72 runs each. He was amongst the thirteen selected to play in the Old Trafford Test against Australia in 1938 but the match was abandoned without a ball being bowled and he was not chosen again in the series. It is fair to say that off-spinners were not exactly “flavour of the month” with the England selectors in the years that Goddard was in his pomp. The first choice spinner was the orthodox left-hander, Hedley Verity of Yorkshire and when a second spinner was played it was usually a leg-spinner such as Ian Peebles, Walter Robins or T.B.Mitchell of Derbyshire. Not until the arrival of Jim Laker and Tony Lock of Surrey in the 1950s was the combination of off-spinner/ orthodox left/arm considered an effective method of attack. There in no doubt at all that an off-spinner with Goddard’s destructive strike-rate would have been welcomed in any Test attack of recent years. It is probable, too, that the arrival of the Second World War at the end of the West Indies series in 1939, deprived him of a number of international appearances in the early 1940s. In all first-class cricket Goddard took 2,979 wickets at an average of 19.84. Only four bowlers have ever taken more career wickets. He finished with six hat-tricks, the same number as his 3