Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

61 Chapter Four No-ball! No bowler welcomes an umpire’s call of ‘no-ball’, but for most it’s just a matter of adjusting the position of the feet on landing, and on with the show. But rather too many have heard this call from an umpire who is “not satisfied as to the fairness of his action”; in short, the umpire believes, or suspects, that the bowler is throwing rather than bowling the ball. At the time of writing the number of bowlers who have experienced this mortifying moment in a first-class match is 117. Thirty-seven of these were Test cricketers (though not all were specialist bowlers), while 26 of them were no-balled in more than one match - the record here being held by the South African Geoff Griffin who was called in ten matches, four in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia between 1958/59 and 1962/63, and the other six during his disastrous tour of England in 1960. For as many as 14 of the 117, the accusation of throwing came as early as the match of their first-class debut. Eleven of this 14 rode out the storm and played - and bowled - again at first-class level. 39 Indeed, three of them went on to take over 100 first-class wickets, the most being the 300 wickets (exactly) taken by Lancashire’s Ralph Whitehead between 1908 and 1914; Whitehead at least gained some measure of compensation by also scoring 131 not out at number eight in his first first-class innings (all v Nottinghamshire at Old Trafford). But there were an unhappy three cricketers who were no-balled for throwing in their respective first first-class matches, and who were never given a chance to redeem themselves. Brief and unhappy Candles indeed; here is what I have been able to glean about them. There was an Englishman … First in the ranks was the only Englishman of the three, Ernest Coxon - or to give him his full name, Ernest James de Veuille Coxon. He was born into a military family, his father being Colonel George Stackpole Coxon of the 45th Regiment of Foot. 40 The family moved around a great deal; Ernest’s four surviving full siblings were born between 1856 and 1872 in Jersey, 39 The 14 include Charlie MacGill, grandfather of Australian Test bowler Stuart MacGill, and a player named Winston Davis: not the West Indian Test player of the 1980s, but a namesake who bowled off spin for the Leeward Islands in a few matches in the early 1990s. 40 George Coxon had an interesting career at home and abroad. It is recorded that in 1851 “he was shot through both thighs in an encounter with the Boers and Hottentots” in the Orange River Sovereignty in South Africa; while from 1876 to 1902 he was private secretary to three successive Dukes of Wellington.