Lives in Cricket No 4 - Ernie Jones

Jones, Christian, Wellington and Alexander Robinson played in practice matches for ‘Goldfields’ against ‘Coastal’ before the arrival of Arthur Jones’ MCC team the following season. All except Wellington then played against MCC in October, 1907. Christian stayed on in Perth and became an influential and prominent player until he retired but the others returned to the goldfields. Jones’ final first-class match saw him fail to take a wicket and he bowled at less than full pace. According to a report in the West Australian , Jones, after playing on asphalt wickets, had become used to pulling up just before his delivery stride in order to keep his balance, with the result that his bowling had lost its sting. A month later Jones made a claim to the Western Australian Cricket Council that he was owed £2 for out-of-pocket expenses incurred in travelling almost four hundred miles from the goldfields and asked to be paid. The request was denied. Jones continued playing cricket in the goldfields before moving to Fremantle. In 1911 he was working as a ‘lumper’ (wharf labourer) and was in devastating form in one season for Fremantle in the WACA competition in 1911/12. Playing in eleven of the fourteen matches, he took 41 wickets at 10.39 with 5 five-wicket hauls and a career-best performance of 9 for 34 against West Perth and a hat-trick against East Perth. In one game, in which he did not play, his son Ernest appeared. His last major game, a hastily arranged one-day match at the WACA ground, saw him represent Western Australia, aged 42, on 26 March 1912 against Syd Gregory’s Australian side on its way to England. Applauded all the way to the wicket by the Australian players, Jones was dismissed first ball, completing a hat-trick for Charles Kelleway, as his side was out for 64. He was not called upon to bowl as medium-pacer Bobby Selk (with 7 for 46 off 14 overs) ran through the Australians for 114 and did not bat in his state’s second innings of 7 for 167. Fremantle dropped out of the WACA district competition at the start of the First World War and did not return until 1921/22. It is not known whether Jones played anywhere else in the meantime, but shift work might have prevented him from doing so. At the start of that season, however, he was described as ‘old in years, but young in energy’, a ‘wonder’, able to bowl with length and direction even if his pace had diminished, and an excellent mentor to the younger generation. Last Days near the Top: 1903-1912 69