Lives in Cricket No 6 - Bill Copson

excellent century by Maurice Leyland enabled England to take a first innings lead of 124 and, in their second innings, Australia collapsed for 58 runs on a ‘sticky dog’ wicket. Allen and Voce bowled unchanged to take all nine wickets to fall, McCormick being absent ill. Bill had some more match practice in a two day friendly match against a Queensland Country XI at Ipswich but, by then, it was unlikely that he would be able to claim a place in the Test team in front of Voce. England won the next Test match even more convincingly by an innings and 22 runs, Hammond playing another superb innings, of 231. The Englishmen were jubilant, having gone two games up in the five match rubber. However they were soon brought down to reality when, in a strange third match at Melbourne, England, in reply to Australia’s first innings total of 200 for 9 declared, made their own declaration at 76 for nine. This was the first time in Test cricket that both sides had declared their first innings closed. The second day’s play was on a ‘gluepot’ wicket and thirteen wickets fell in about three hours. England had hoped to take more Australian wickets cheaply but the pitch had eased considerably and Bradman came into his own with a superb match winning innings of 270. He added 346 for the sixth wicket with J.H. Fingleton, at the time a record for any wicket in a Test match in Australia. England were set an enormous fourth innings target and, despite another splendid century from Leyland, went down by 365 runs. The match had been watched by a record crowd of 350,534, the most for any first-class game in Australia. The tourists’ itinerary in those more leisured days gave the team a well deserved break after the rigours of the Test Matches in which they visited Tasmania. Copson played in both first-class matches on the island, his first first-class match for seven weeks, taking four wickets in the first game against the state side, not of course a competitor in the Sheffield Shield at that time. He took four wickets against a Combined Tasmania XI in the second game at Hobart which was spoiled by rain and ended in a draw. Because of the imminence of the Fourth Test at Adelaide, Bill was not given a chance in the state match against South Australia which preceded it. England went down to a heavy defeat by 148 runs in the Fourth Test. Some very effective spin bowling by Fleetwood-Smith, who had a match return of ten for 239, helped dismiss the visiting side for 330 and 243, despite a good score by Barnett of 129 in the first 38 Australia and New Zealand