Lives in Cricket No 6 - Bill Copson

their first match on foreign soil against All Ceylon when they had a comfortable win in what had become a traditional ‘pipe opener’ for many Australia-bound MCC teams. All Ceylon made 149 for 4 wickets declared and Copson, though ‘suffering badly from sea legs’ had an economical spell of twelve overs without taking a wicket. The MCC innings of 232 for the loss of five wickets was dominated by an unbroken partnership of 140 between Hardstaff and Allen which was a record for any wicket in these series of matches. After being ashore for only twelve hours in Colombo, the team re-embarked and their ship set sail for Australia where they arrived at Fremantle in Western Australia at 6am on 13 October. The journey had taken thirty one days which in these days of fast air travel seems like an eternity. Travel within Australia was to be mainly by long distance train: some internal air travel between the various State capitals had by then been established, but MCC declined to sanction this largely for safety reasons. Railway trips were made more tiresome as different State railway gauges often necessitated change of trains at the borders. The longest trip of all was from Perth to South Australia, which included the crossing of the Nullarbor Desert, with its famous three hundred mile length of straight track. Nevertheless these long sea voyages and railway journeys had a distinct advantage in that cricket teams certainly got to know each other extremely well. Copson would no doubt have shared a cabin with his county colleague Stan Worthington, but would not have known many of the other team members particularly well at the outset of the tour. The tourists tried to keep themselves fit by many forms of deck sports, which also helped to establish a closer team spirit. The team stayed at the Palace Hotel, Perth for nearly two weeks whilst they played the opening two first-class matches of the tour. MCC had a very comfortable win over Western Australia, not at that time a Sheffield Shield competitor, by an innings and 180 runs. Copson did not play in this game, but was selected for the second match against a Combined XI. The locals had been strengthened by the inclusion of the Australian Test players Fingleton, McCabe and Grimmett, together with a future one, C.L.Badcock. In his first ever first-class match abroad, Copson performed very well. With an undefeated ten runs, he helped his captain to add seventy for the tenth wicket out of an MCC total of 36 Australia and New Zealand