Focus on: Cricket tourists

0 Comments | Western Daily Press, May 29, 2010

Two long-ago cricket teams will be battling it out in our salerooms next month, recalling some legendary names in the game.

The big squad in uniform blazers is the 1928-29 MCC touring team to Australia, and this postcard is signed by 12 of them, including Wally Hammond, Herbert Sutcliffe and Harold Larwood.

It’s on offer at Clevedon Salerooms on Thursday with a second card, not pictured, of a 1954 MCC touring team signed by 19 of the 21-man squad. Estimate: Pounds 50-Pounds 80.

That great big teddy bear of a man leading the 1928 team was Kent’s Percy Chapman, as amiable and easy-going as he looked – until you found yourself bowling against him.

His vice-captain was Somerset’s Jack White, while Hammond is looking suave, young and very Brylcreemed third from the left in the middle row.

The other line-up is the South African touring team at the County Ground in Bristol in 1907, caught between sessions as they were proceeding to thrash Gloucestershire by an innings and 38 runs.

It’s one of a substantial array of postcards to be found at Henry Aldridge and Son’s sale in Devizes on June 19, the work of the Bristol photographer Fred Bustin.

This was the fourth South African tour of England, but the first to give the tourists a Test series in this country. England won 1-0 with two matches drawn, but the Proteas were no lambs to the slaughter, with a quartet of demon googly bowlers.

Second left on the middle row is London-born Reg Schwarz – we used to send them decent players in those days – who was top bowler in England that summer with 137 wickets at an average of 11.79.

But the following year it was his partner in crime Bert Vogler, on the left on the back row, who was one of Wisden’s cricketers of the year and the earliest South African to be named one of its leading cricketers in the world.

Both of them bamboozled our boys all summer long, as did their trusty back-up men Faulkner and White.

They’re left and centre on the front row of what looks a tough and determined team that left not only the Gloucestershire lads wondering what hit them.