Lives in Cricket No 4 - Ernie Jones

apparent sufferings and cried out, ‘Kill it! Kill it!’ The fieldsman, however, declined the responsibility, whereupon a gentleman in much agitation, leaped the barrier and ran towards the spot with beneficent slaughter in his stride but just as he stretched out his hand the sparrow, which had only been stunned by the blow, rose in the air, and flew blithely away. The incident greatly tickled the players, and the crowd, which assured of the sparrow’s wellbeing, laughed heartily at the good Samaritan as he returned to his seat empty-handed. Whatever the sport, Jones was a character. In some ways he appears as a Victorian or Edwardian Merv Hughes and his fondness for nude wrestling in the dressing room more than matches Hughes’ celebrated kissing of team-mates, although perhaps a deeper explanation is called for. A visit to Broken Hill in 2006, and examination of archival photographs from the mines around 1900 revealed one superb picture of a group of twenty naked miners waiting to take communal showers at the end of a shift. Given the arduous conditions and extreme danger of working underground, it would not be surprising if miners indulged in a bit of horseplay at such times and wrestling for a cake of soap might have been one form of it. Maybe Jones thought a long spell under a burning sun was another arduous practice but it wasn’t until Joe Darling sent him sliding on his backside into the showers that some measure of peace came to the dressing room. Being an extrovert and occasionally quick with a quip, it is inevitable that apochryphal stories around Jones abound. It has been widely reported that in retirement Jones would row a dinghy out to English teams’ ships arriving at Fremantle and heckle them by shouting: ‘100 to one England for the Tests’. If this occurred at all it would have been in 1920/21 when Jones, aged 51, was working for Customs and living in Perth. He was working and living in Adelaide at the time of the 1924/25 and 1928/29 English tours. It stretches the bounds of credibility to imagine that Jones, a poor pensioner in Adelaide at 63, would have taken himself back to Perth for this exercise against Douglas Jardine’s team in 1932, or done so four years later against Gubby Allen’s side. As with his supposed reply to the Prince of Wales’ enquiry whether he had ever attended Adelaide’s leading boys public school, St Peter’s College: ‘Yes, I take the dust cart there regularly’, it was a case of what we like to think Jones might have said . . . and done. The Legend 85