Lives in Cricket No 6 - Bill Copson

497. He opened the tourists’ bowling with Voce and captured four of the home side’s wickets for 82 runs. The Combined XI, thanks largely to a record second-wicket partnership of 306 in 235 minutes between Badcock and Horrocks, managed a comfortable draw. MCC ran into difficulties with their wicket-keepers in this game, as both Duckworth( broken finger) and Ames (strained back) were unable to play, so Fagg kept wicket. In the subsequent two matches Tom Wade, the Essex wicket-keeper who was visiting Australia on holiday, was co-opted into the side. The touring side moved on to the eastern side of Australia by train. They left Perth in the evening of 24 October and took three nights and two whole days before reaching South Australia in the early morning of 27 October. Here they stayed at Bentley’s Hotel at Clare for a one day game against a South Australian Country XI, which they won by nine wickets. Copson played in this match but, after taking two wickets for 13, slipped on wet turf during his fifth over, straining his groin. He then missed the next two first-class matches, against South Australia and Victoria. This was unfortunate for him as he desperately needed match practice if he was to have any chance of making the Test side. He returned to the team for the important game against New South Wales starting on 13 November, when MCC suffered their first defeat of the tour. He could, however, only manage to take three wickets in the match which the home team won easily by 135 runs. Shortly after this match, on 22 November, Allen commented in a letter to Pelham Warner that Copson was one of several players who did not have ‘a great deal of cricket brain.’ In particular he thought that Copson tried too many experimental deliveries, including his ‘dapper’, presumably a slower ball, which was often hit for four. Even so he still listed him as a ‘possible’ for the First Test. Shortly after this, however, Copson suffered a recurrence of his earlier injury, and missed the next two matches, against an Australian XI at Sydney and against Queensland at Brisbane. By now he had no performance on the field which could be set against his captain’s evident lack of confidence in him. On 4 December, England went into the First Test Match, without Copson of course, at the Woolloongabba ground at Brisbane, with the depressing record of only having won two of their seven first-class matches so far. They surprised everyone, not least themselves, by winning by the handsome margin of 322 runs. An Australia and New Zealand 37