Lives in Cricket No 5 - Rockley Wilson

from the crowd. Although most of the crowd were unaware of Hobbs’ injury, Wilson and Fender chose to criticise the behaviour of the crowd in their reports to their newspapers. To a modern eye, the reports hardly seem explosive. For example, Wilson wrote “It was unworthy of a Sydney crowd to jeer at Hobbs running lame as a certain section did.” On the second day, by when the crowd were aware of the criticisms made of them, Wilson had to join Rhodes at the crease when England had stumbled to 14 for two in their second innings and he was roundly booed all the way to the crease. When play was resumed after the Sunday rest day, and Rhodes was out, Hobbs was warmly applauded as he walked to the wicket, the crowd, now obviously having learned of his handicap when fielding, even chorusing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” In contrast, Wilson was again loudly barracked during his innings and when he returned to the pavilion on his own dismissal, having added but a single to his overnight four, some in the crowd chanting the letters L I A R , others shouting “Squealer” and “Go home” and still others just booing and jeering “like animals” as Cecil Parkin put it. Upset by the reaction, Wilson remonstrated with the crowd until shepherded into the pavilion by Harry Makepeace and M.A.Noble, the intervention of the veteran Australian cricketer quickly quelling the barracking, at least that from the members. Noble also persuaded the members to receive Fender in complete silence when he emerged to bat, advice that was largely followed if only by spectators in the pavilion. When England again took to the field, Wilson’s weak throwing also encouraged a volley of uncomplimentary shouts such as “Throw it up, Miss Wilson.” Similar rounds of booing and name-calling greeted Wilson in his final appearances of the tour. These incidents at Sydney sparked a spate of comment in the Australian newspapers, with several correspondents attempting to explain the barracking away as the work of a few on the Hill, worse for wear for drink. Others criticised Wilson and Fender for failing to say in their cables that the behaviour of the great majority in the crowd had been sympathetic to Hobbs, the line taken by the leader writers. Fender responded with a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald in which he said he had reported what he had heard on the field of play and was surprised the Press had not “given a taste of the lash” to those spectators who had been unable to control their language or discriminate between “harmless fun” and “other things.” Confronted by reporters at the end of the third day’s play, Wilson said the papers had quoted selectively from his Australia and After 84