Lives in Cricket No 18 - FR Foster

and seemed listless. Barnes was best bowler with five for 105. 45 England reached the 109 they needed to win, losing only two wickets. Foster’s successes were beginning to be appreciated, especially in his native city. For a week after this Test match there was a great placard over the New Street Picture House which read ‘Come and See Frank’. It was assumed passers-by would know to whom the placard referred. 46 Apart from the cricket some excitement occurred on the Sunday between days two and three. Invited to dine with the Governor of South Australia, Sir Day Bosanquet, the players arrived when a bush fire was threatening the governor’s residence, Marble Hill, and they helped quell the blaze before much damage was inflicted. The next first-class match was across the Bass Strait, with Tasmania at Launceston, and Frank Foster was skipper. The youngest-ever captain of an English touring team was only 22 but the previous English season had been the hugely successful Warwicks captain, and as the only amateur in the side was the logical choice under the code of the time. Perhaps official thoughts were that here was a future Test captain. Sadly such hopes were to collapse dramatically. Tasmania, omitting one of the best wicket-keepers in Australia, Norman Dodds, for sad, some may say disgraceful, non-cricketing reasons (alleged peccadilloes involving the wrong sort of sexual orientation) did well to reach 217, though Foster’s non-use of either himself or Barnes detracted from the seriousness. Barnes opened the batting instead, contributing 35 towards MCC’s 332 made in less than four hours, though things may have been different had Tasmania possessed a capable wicket-keeper. Tasmania then compiled a somewhat dour 165 against an attack again lacking its best bowlers and England went on to an eight-wicket win. The 19-year-old debutant Lyn Gill must have been particularly disappointed when stand-in keeper Llew Thomas dropped Woolley off his second ball in first-class cricket: ‘it is such stuff as dreams are made on.’ Good start as skipper, with MCC winning, but Foster had not taken his own performances very seriously. MCC then went on to Hobart, Foster again leading. This time Barnes opened the bowling and his first ball saw W.K.Eltham caught by Foster. Tasmania struggled to 124 all out. MCC quickly lost Kinneir but then Woolley joined Rhodes and they added 206 in 100 minutes. Woolley was in fact down at No.8, with Mead No.3, but expressed his frustrations to Barnes who told him to get ready to bat and take the field as soon as the first wicket fell. Foster recounted what happened next: Under the Southern Cross 60 45 In a big innings Rhodes was given only one over for six runs. Age 34 he had long been a spent force as a Test bowler; despite a very brief comeback late in life he was at his best before thirty, disproving the myth that Test slow bowlers improve with age, a wasteful theory that has never borne scrutiny. 46 This picture house had a cricket connexion of a sort. It was right next to the site of the Hen and Chickens hotel, where the first tour to Australia in 1863/64 was organised.