Lives in Cricket No 16 - Joe Hardstaff

followed on 365 runs behind and collapsed for 165. Australia thus won by an innings and 200 runs. Joe was yorked by Nash for one. Joe missed the match against the Victorian Country XII and made five against the Combined Universities at Sydney. Then it was on to New Zealand. Joe did not play against Otago, but made 22 against a New Zealand XI. The tour finally ended with a seven-wicket win over Auckland. Batting at three, Joe made 51 and six. The team, minus Fagg and Robins who had already gone home, 33 left Auckland for Los Angeles. From here, after a visit to Hollywood, where they were entertained by Sir Aubrey Smith amongst others, they travelled by train to New York where they boarded the RMS Queen Mary on 21 April, reaching Southampton on 26 April, just four days before the start of the English cricket season. There is no doubt that Joe was not as successful on the 1936/37 tour as he had been on the 1935/36 tour. This time he scored 850 runs and averaged 34.00 in Australia. In New Zealand he made a further 79 runs which took his tour first-class aggregate to 929 with a final average of 33.17 which put him in sixth position in the averages behind Hammond, Barnett, Wyatt, Leyland and Ames. He was well ahead, however, of Fagg, Worthington and Fishlock, and also Allen and Robins. Nevertheless it was rather disappointing, but he had improved as the tour had progressed. It was felt that he had persevered and had done his best to deal with the problems with which he was confronted – not least the problems imposed by his captain. Furthermore, he had achieved something which his father had done before him: he had played in all five Test Matches on an Ashes tour in Australia – a unique record. This was, of course, an Ashes tour and thus there was considerable pressure on Australia to retain the Ashes and even more upon England to regain them; much of the cricket was highly competitive. It was very different from 1935/36 when the team had been told that the results ‘did not really matter’. In the earlier tour, the leading Australian cricketers were absent on tour in South Africa which meant that Joe had not had to face McCormick, O’Reilly, Fleetwood-Smith, Grimmett and Sievers. Australian Test Tour, 1936/37 61 33 Fagg had contracted rheumatic fever after the Tasmanian leg of the tour and Robins, having been replaced by Worthington, left during the Fifth Test for ‘business’ reasons.