by Sumit Gangopadhyay
He confessed to being devastated on dismissing Victor Trumper. “It was like killing a dove”
The classical leg spinner. He tossed it up and bowled googlies. He got spanked, and captured wickets.
Between 1920 and 1926 he played 21 Tests and captured 99 wickets. That included a best of 9 for 121. That remains the best ever for Australia.
779 wickets were captured for New South Wales. After capturing all 10 wickets for 66 runs against Glamorgan, he named his autobiography 10 for 66 and All That. Playing on the famous 1066 and All That by Yeatman and Sellar.
A delightfully jovial character. When Victoria scored 1107 in an innings, he bowled 64 8-ball overs to concede 362 runs for 4 wickets. He claimed that he would have finished with the best bowling figures if three catches had not been dropped off his bowling, two by a man sitting above the pavilion wearing a bowler hat.
If his teammates dropped any, he joked, “Never mind, I’m expecting a wicket any day now.”
On 31st December 1967 Arthur Mailey, great cricketer, cartoonist and humourist, finished his spell of life.
Translated from Bengali by Arunabha Sengupta
Sketch by Maha