Lives in Cricket No 4 - Ernie Jones

was unfit. England got home by 66 runs after scores of 145 and 84 to Australia’s 119 and 44. For the winners Jack Hearne finished with 10 for 60 and Bobby Peel 8 for 53, against Hugh Trumble who gathered 12 for 89 for the losers. Richardson’s six wicketless overs went for 22 runs, while Jones took 1 for 13 in three overs. Harry Trott’s team was unfortunate in not winning the series. The first two Tests saw a victory to each side but the third was upset by rain. The tour established Jones’ reputation as something of a match for Tom Richardson, although not in the Tests where he took just a quarter of the Surrey bowler’s 24 wickets. Jones’ 6 for 208 from 74 overs in the Tests showed that he was yet to make his mark. On the tour overall, though, he gathered eight five-wicket hauls on the way to 121 wickets at 16.03, figures which placed him second to off-spinner Hugh Trumble in the team bowling aggregates and third behind Tom McKibbin and Trumble in the averages. According to journalist Moody, who toured with the team, while Jones was no Spofforth in beating batsmen on good wickets, he was as great a terror on fiery wickets, and McKibbin was deadly when they became sticky. At the same time the success of both men drew complaints. Reviewing the tour, the Wisden journalist Edgar Pardon repeated the early season comment from the Daily Telegraph by pointing out that the Australian teams which had been exemplary in the past regarding throwing could no longer be regarded as such, stating that ‘a fast bowler with the action of Jones, or a slow bowler with a delivery of McKibbin, would have found no place in the earlier Australian elevens that came to England’. The evidence against Jones, however, seemed to be circumstantial because the writer could not ‘conceive a ball being fairly bowled at the pace of an express train, without a bent arm’. It is possible that he was also the author of the Telegraph article but if so he had moved 180 degrees. The Australians came home via America. Jones played in a minor game against a New Jersey Eighteen in New York and all three first-class matches against the Gentlemen of Philadelphia. In New York his bowling was the feature of the game and he secured 8 wickets for 6 runs as the batsmen were rattled from the start and made poor attempts to stop his cannon-shot deliveries. One batsman, on returning to the pavilion was asked by a friend how he got out, as he didn’t see his dismissal. ‘Didn’t you’, the batsman replied, ‘I guess you saw about as much of it as I did.’ The Great Fast Bowler: 1896-1899 27