Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

59 Hence his selection for the New Year match against South Australia. But this time he was hit, his 15 eight-ball overs costing 70 runs in South Australia’s first innings; he was not asked to bowl at all in the 35.6 overs of their second innings. He was never given another chance. He was dropped for Victoria’s next match, against New South Wales, but was back in the Victorian XII due to play Tasmania early in February. However, on 28 January the state of Victoria was placed into quarantine on account of the flu epidemic, and by 5 February - two days before the match at Hobart was due to start - all sea traffic between the states was banned. The match with Tasmania was called off, and with it George Truman’s first-class career. He continued to take wickets in club cricket, however, as attested by figures of eight for 33 in 12 overs against North Melbourne in December 1920, and an analysis of 6-4-6-6 against Richmond in November 1921. He finally left Carlton late in the 1920s and moved to sub-district cricket with Brighton, and was still playing a high standard of club cricket into the 1930s. A stockbroker by profession, Truman became a member of the Melbourne Stock Exchange in 1919 and was still a member at the time of his death in June 1955, aged 68. As with Truman, the match in which Leonard Beard made his mark on first- class cricket was not a match in his country’s main first-class competition. Truman missed out on a Sheffield Shield appearance because the Shield was not up for competition in the first post-war season of 1918/19. Beard’s match, for Wellington against Otago in January 1928, was simply a friendly match outside the normal competition for the Plunket Shield. Although Otago were pretty much at full strength, Wellington took the opportunity to try out some new players, three of whom - including Beard - were making their first-class debuts. As with all their matches in 1927/28, the game ended in a comfortable win for Wellington, this time by 163 runs. They took a first innings lead of 94 (Beard out for 16 at number 11), and pressed on in their second innings to reach 290 at the fall of the ninth wicket, of which Ted Badcock had made 108. Beard then joined the number ten, Bruce Massey, and they proceeded to add a further 123 runs, in part of what Wellington’s Evening Post described as ‘one of the finest exhibitions of batting in the history of representative cricket in Wellington’. Their side’s sixth wicket had fallen at 79, but all the remaining batsman took the attack to the bowlers, not least the last pair. Massey, playing ‘sound but aggressive cricket’, made 69 with seven fours, while Beard, who ‘hit lustily’ for his 60 not out, managed five fours and four sixes. Set over 500 to win, Otago were dismissed for 344, with their second top- scorer Arthur Galland (60) losing his wicket to Beard - his only wicket in 29 overs in the match. He also took a catch, a skier at mid-on, to end the match. Like George Truman, Beard was in the side for his bowling, and the runs he made were simply seen as an unexpected, and maybe unrepeatable, bonus. Number 11