Rozzy, Coops and Bev: Easts’ Loss … and Australia’s Loss Too!

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Sport

With the new NRL season just around the corner, one of the strongest clubs will be, as ever, the Sydney Roosters, formerly before their rebranding, the Eastern Suburbs District Rugby League Club, one of the foundation clubs of the NSW Rugby League in 1908. This sporting history piece focuses on three of the club’s greatest wing three-quarters who all had atypical careers with Eastern Suburbs.

imageThe peculiar thread that connects these three is that their reputations as undeniably great players is based not on their respective careers with Eastern Suburbs, nor really on their performances at international level for their country, but on their prolonged, stellar careers in the English Rugby League (ERL) championship. They all began their first-class senior careers in League playing for Easts but circumstance, chance or opportunity, dictated that Easts (and Australia) were to be denied the full fruits of the greatness of their wing 3/4 play.

The first of the three Easts flankers of yesteryear, Albert Rosenfeld, played in the inaugural 1908 season in Australia, starring for Easts (alongside the pioneering League ‘immortal’ Dally Messenger). Rosenfeld played as a five-eighth, winning selection in the first ever Australian test against New Zealand. Although he initially wasn’t selected for the First Kangaroo squad to tour Britain at the end of the season (1908-09), after a public outcry he was added to the touring party. On the tour, Rosenfeld playing ‘stand-off’ (the English term for 5/8) against the powerful Great Britain team, caught the eye of several Northern Union (ERL) professional clubs. At the end of the Kangaroo tour Huddersfield secured the Easts star’s signature. Huddersfield turned the 166cm tall Australian 5/8 into a winger and the rest was British rugby league history.

AA Rosenfeld AA Rosenfeld

Playing for Huddersfield Rosenfeld rewrote the record books. In the 1911-12 season he scored 78 tries, a new record for the ERL. Two seasons later, he broke his own record with 80 tries in the season – which remains the all-time record in first-class rugby league, never matched! In 287 games with Huddersfield (in a career interrupted for three seasons by war service for Britain in the Great War) Rosenfeld scored a prolific 366 tries! As his career tapered off he played a couple of seasons with Wakefield Trinity and Bradford Northern.

After his professional commitment to Huddersfield and the Northern Union, ‘Rozzy’ Rosenfeld played only four more games for the Eastern Suburbs Tri-colours in the early part of the 1909 season (overall for Easts he played about a dozen games and scored just the 6 tries and kicked 12 goals). Similarly in his international career, Rosenfeld played only the four tests for Australia in 1908-09 and never again donned the blue and maroon❈ of the Kangaroos.

Rosenfeld married a local girl and stayed on in Huddersfield after his retirement from the game. When he died in 1970 he was the last surviving Kangaroo tourist from the 1908 pioneers. As well as his inclusion in both the British Rugby League Hall of Fame and the ‘100 Greatest Australian Players’ list, Rosenfeld, an Orthodox Jew, was accepted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

LW Cooper LW Cooper

Lionel Cooper, the second of the trio, emerged towards the end of WWII, originally coming from western NSW. Eastern Suburbs stalwart Ray Stehr spotted Cooper playing Australian Rules in Darwin during the war. After a handful of games for Easts he was selected for his state (6 tries in 4 games) and helped Easts win the 1945 Sydney premiership. He had a super year in 1946, representing Australia with distinction, 2 tries (80 to 90 yard efforts) in 3 tests against the powerful, touring Great Britain Lions and capping it off by being chosen as NSW Official Player of the Year.

In 1946-47 Cooper was lured to play professionally in England, and like Rosenfeld joined Huddersfield over bids from Leeds. In nine seasons and 333 games for the East Yorkshire club, the physically imposing, dynamic Cooper scored 420 tries on the wing or centre. A sensation in England, his achievements include 71 tries in the 1951-52 season and a all-time record 10 in one match against Keighley!

As with Rosenfeld before him, Cooper never played for Easts or Australia after signing up with an English club. His accomplishments in the ERL sponsored internationals, playing for Other Nationalities and the British Empire teams against Great Britain and New Zealand (17 tries in 17 matches), however give testimony to how great a loss to Australia the star winger was after completing just two seasons in Australia.

Gregory’s Guide to Rugby League (1965) described the West Wyalong born Cooper as “a bullocking, bruising winger … a great finisher of back-line movements … incorporating a hip-bumping technique to brush off defenders”. After he finished with Huddersfield Cooper returned to Australia but could not be enticed to play again in the NSWRFL and retired.

Brian Bevan is the most curious member of this trio of Australian wing exiles. Waverley born Bevan left Sydney rugby league and Australia precisely because he was not successful! A contemporary of Cooper’s, he was an Eastern Suburbs junior who unlike Cooper struggled to establish himself at the club. Bevan spent four years at Easts rarely able to get out of second grade. During this time he managed only eight games in the top grade and remarkably, given his later English triumphs, no tries.

BB BB

Bevan enlisted in the RAN during the war and his ship was sent to the UK for refitting. Whilst there, through the intermediary efforts of another former Easts’ winger in the UK (Bill Shankland), he approached first the Leeds Club, then Huntslet, for a trial. However he was summarily rebuffed by both clubs who thought the young Australian too frail-looking to survive in the rough and tough English competition.

Shankland advised Bevan to try Warrington. Whatever reservations they might have had about the frail Aussie winger, Warrington gave him a trial, playing him in a club reserves game. Impressed by his try-scoring performance, the South Lancashire club put him in the first XIII the next game and signed him up. In his first full season Bevan was an instant sensation, notching up 48 tries for the Wires (as Warrington rugby footballers are known), 14 to the better of any other player in the ERL comp that season.

Bevan continued the machine-like try-scoring exploits for the rest of his career with Warrington, consistency, sheer, relentless accumulation of three-pointers was his trademark feature. Five times he topped the championship try list, scoring a hat-trick (three tries) or more 98 times in his career (seven in a game twice!) With Bevan in its armoury Warrington was a very successful team in the period, both in terms of trophies won and in his crowd-pulling capacity for the club. Bevan in the starting lineup alone, could pull an extra 5,000 to a game (and not just home games) [‘Brian Eyrl Bevan: The greatest try scorer ever’, www.odeauk.fsnet.co.uk ].

In all Bevan scored 796 career tries (the nearest to him all-time, Wigan and GB great Billy Boston, is a distant 534 tries). For Warrington he scored a staggering 740 tries in 620 games (a shade under 1.2 tries per game!), plus 26 tries in 16 international games (Other Nationalities). His professional rugby career ended in 1964 after two seasons with lowly Blackpool Borough as player-coach.

imageWhat made this slightly-built, bald, toothless, chain-smoking winger such a phenomenon? Fellow Australian and ERL professional second rower Arthur Clues described him as “a skeleton in braces”, a physique looking totally out of place on a football field, but ‘Bev’ proved that looks can be deceiving. Firstly there was his sheer, blistering speed, he possessed an instant, rapid acceleration … he had been NSW sprint champion back home in Sydney. Allied to this amazing change of pace was a huge side-step off either foot without losing speed. The other weapon in Bevan’s attacking arsenal was his dazzling swerve, described as “a body wobble which totally debilitated (the opposition) … (Bevan was possessed seemingly of) swivel hips” [R Gate, The Great Bev: The Rugby League Career of Brian Bevan, F Keating, ‘Bald, toothless chainsmoker who staggered rugby league, The Guardian, 20 November 2000].

Another out-of-the-ordinary quality of Bevan’s was his ability to take intercepts, the “Wiz from Oz” possessed uncanny anticipation to grab passes intended for his opposite centre or wing and his extreme speed usually did the rest! Bevan’s physical appearance was certainly deceptive, slight of build but he was very wiry and undertook great preparations before a match, always spending an inordinate amount of time carefully and heavily bandaging his wonky-looking knees.

One additional factor distinguished Bevan from his peers and contributed vitally to his success. Bevan revolutionised the way wingers played the game. Before the Warrington “Wing Wiz” came along, wingers tended to stay fixed on the wing, running a line parallel to the sideline. Their positional role clearly defined as finishing off a backline movement, receiving the ball and making a hell-for-leather dash for the corner post. Bevan’s style was completely instinctual and unorthodox, he would often receive the ball and if well-marked on the flank he would suddenly pivot at right angles and make a characteristic diagonal run for the centre of the field to avoid defenders. The wandering wingman would often roam all over the field looking for an opening in the defence, and when he spotted one, he would turn on his incredible speed, usually leaving a bewildered trail of defenders in his wake. Warrington V Wigan (Ward Cup, 1948) typifies this, weaving from one side of the field to the other, beating over half the opposing team by himself and making them look complete fools in a zig-zagging 125 yard run to the tryline [Gate, loc.cit., Keating, loc.cit.].

image⇐(Not much of a likeness!)

Bevan was capable of tackling but he wasn’t much of a contributor in this area and far from the strongest defender in League for that matter. This didn’t overly concern the club chiefs at Wilderspool (the Wires’ headquarters). They correctly reasoned that the wing king was not there to wear himself out defending, but was in the team for the attacking edge it gave them, they were happy for him to keep producing those spectacular, often match-winning tries he was famous for. Recognition by his own country of the magnitude of Bevan’s English achievements was shown in his 2008 selection as one of the ‘100 Greatest Australian Players’.

Three Easts’ match-winning wingers, absolute legends of the game in Britain, but all lost to the club from Bondi, Sydney, that gave them their start … leaving Easts’ fans and Australian RL supporters generally to ponder what might have been.

____________________________________________________________________________
❈ the national rugby league colours for Australia prior to its change in the late 1920s to the now universally familiar “green and gold”)

T20’s Grand Obsession, ‘Sixermania’: Its Time to Restore the ‘Five’

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Media & Communications, Sport

A large part of the focus in the Big Bash League, currently showing on a TV screen near you, is on the hitting of sixes. Perhaps I should say, more accurately, a large part of the commentators’ focus anyway. The fast food-spieling game-callers strive to outdo each other in exaggerated amazement at the distance each six travels (electronically measured) and lap up every crowd catch or would-be catch.

Those Goliaths of commercial cricket, Channels 10 and 9, structure their marketing of T20 and List A games around the action of big six hitting, highlight packages thrive on a roll call of sixes and the frenzied crowd reaction.

imageEverything is geared towards facilitating the hitting of sixes; the boundary rope positioned some distance in from the fence as a safety measure to prevent serious injury to fielders sliding into the boundary palings (in the manner befalling Simon Jones at the Gabba in 2002), allied with modern bat technology and fielding restrictions. The outcome; sixes have become as commonplace as cooking programs on the box, it’s all too easy for the top batters in T20.

Consequently hitting a six has been devalued as an achievement, it is no longer considered anything that special or exceptional, just something really to be expected or anticipated … this ball, next ball, next over.

imageBasil Fawlty in the ‘Rat’ episode of Fawlty Towers (many of you will no doubt recall it) takes back an over-generous portion of veal cutlet he has just served up to the public health inspector for the third time, saying to the exasperated inspector, “Too much of a good thing always leaves one wanting less, I always find.” So it is with the spate of faux sixes that pass over the rope without clearing the fence. Incidentally, I just don’t get it! How can the ball lobbing on the full on the rope be considered a six, given that when the full field was previously used in matches the ball had to clear the white picket fence to register a six (whereas hitting the traditional white pickets on the full was only four). It seems to be simply all about making it easier to hit a six … sixes and wickets, the constant flow of both is the raison d’être of the limited overs game.

My proposition is that we reintroduce the score of five to correctly acknowledge the devaluation of this lesser six. Before the Great War a stroke that cleared the boundary line or fence on the full was worth ‘five’ (a little later it was adjusted up to ‘six’ to give the shot a fairer proportional differentiation to a ‘four’). A five could be awarded for a shot that lands over the rope but does not clear the fence.

The difference between a ‘5’ and a ‘6’ might not amount to much in the scheme of an individual’s innings (below see Footnote) but it does justly reward the superior hit, a real six which truly is “hit OUT of the field of play”.

imageFootnote: Although it could make a substantial difference to a batter’s score as the following example illustrates – in a Sydney grade cricket match in 1903 the great pre-WWI batsman Victor Trumper—in a sizzling innings of 335 in 165 minutes—hit the ball 22 times out of the playing perimeter on the fly and was awarded a five for each of the clearances of the fence. If achieved under the amended rules Trumper would have scored 357.

Australian Cricket’s Modern ‘Lord of the Rings’ Saga

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Sport

Ever since Keith ‘Nugget’ Miller retired from test cricket in 1956, Australia has searched for a replacement to fill the outstanding all-rounder’s shoes.

imageTo call Miller’s career (and life) ‘flamboyant’ seems a bit trite. World War II fighter pilot, journalist & man-about-town bon vivant, the Victorian scored almost 3,000 runs in tests (7 centuries, top score 147, averaging a shade under 37). His right-arm fast bowling was even more valuable to Australia (170 wickets at 22.97 with best figures of 7/60). The versatile sports star also found time to play 50 games for St Kilda in the VFL & represented both Victoria & NSW in the triennial national football carnivals.

After Miller exited the test arena, Australian cricket embarked on a seemingly never-ending quest to find another (genuine test standard) all-rounder. The mantle seemed likely to fall on Richie Benaud at one stage. Early on, Benaud’s batting appeared more promising than his bowling as he struggled to perfect the leg-spinner’s art. Later Benaud’s concentration on his bowling and on captaincy paid dividends – to the detriment of his batting, as his 24.45 overall test average illustrates. Benaud’s teammate, Alan Davidson, a superb left-arm fast-medium bowler, was more than a handy batsmen usually batting at 8, but his increasingly heavy workload with the ball (especially after Lindwall and Miller retired) took the edge off his batting performances.

Sir Garfield St Aubran
Sir Garfield St Aubran
Through the sixties the Australian cricket establishment watched with envy as Barbados’ Garfield Sobers developed into one of the greatest ever all-rounders for the West Indies. Similarly South Africa produced Mike Proctor, a test class all-rounder whose country’s Apartheid policy restricted his opportunities to just seven test matches and so denied him the chance to demonstrate the breadth of his all-round game at the highest level.

Players who Australia typically tried in the role at the time included Ken ‘Slasher’ Mackay and Tom Veivers – handy cricketers with both bat and ball, but not likely to dominate a test match with either. Australia’s forte seemed more to incline towards specialist batsmen who could turn their hand occasionally to spin like Bob Cowper and Bobby Simpson or batsmen who could bowl part-time medium pace like Doug Walters, Graeme Watson and much later Mark Waugh. At the same time, frontline bowlers capable now and then of a weighty contribution with the bat, were encouraged, eg, Ray Lindwall or more recently Mitchell Johnson and Mitchell Starc.

The emergence in the late seventies/early eighties of four great all-rounders on the international scene – Ian Botham (Eng.), Richard Hadlee (NZ), Imran Khan (Pak.) & Kapil Dev (Ind.) – was an added spur for Australia to find a genuine all-rounder. The success of these four emphasised to the Australia authorities the benefit of a more balanced team with an all-rounder to strengthen both the batting and bowling when required.

imageA combination of the difficulty in finding a competent replacement for Rod Marsh and the lack of success in finding a genuine all-rounder (and the desperation it engendered in Australian cricket), might account for the attempt in the early eighties to plant Wayne ‘Flipper’ Phillips into the role of an “all-rounder of sorts”, a batsman-wicketkeeper (long before it become standard practice that a keeper had to also be an accomplished batsman in his own right). With Phillips himself talking it up, the reality that his keeping was not up to the accepted mark did nothing for his batting confidence and that was the end of Flipper’s international career.

Greg ‘Mo’ Matthews, an orthodox off-spinner with an unorthodox, quirky personality in the midst of a staid 1980s Aussie cricketing fraternity, was the next hopeful the believers turned to. As it eventuated his batting (Ave: 41.08 over 33 matches) proved of more advantage to the test side. Matthews’ test bowling largely lacked penetration except on one memorable occasion, the famous 1986 tied test in Madras.

Similarly, leg-spinner and hard-hitting lower order batter, Peter Sleep, found himself regularly in and out of the Australian XI over a 12-year period as the Australian selectors strove to find the all-rounder missing link in the team. Ultimately, both Sleep’s bowling and batting lacking the consistency and penetration to hold down a permanent place.

Steve Waugh was the next “new great hope” for the role. Waugh was elevated very early to the Australian XI after a handful of state games. Waugh was retained in the Australian side despite struggling with the bat for the best part of four years before his first (breakthrough) century for Australia (177x v England in 1989) on the promise of his budding all-rounder credentials and handy medium pace bowling (especially effective in ODIs). His progress to test-quality batsman, his recurring back problems and the traditional reluctance of batting captains to bowl themselves, saw him bowl much less frequently, and eventually rarely, for the latter part of his test career.

imageThrough the 1990s up to the present time, Australia has continued with its “Holy Grail” like search for a genuine test all-rounder. Again, other countries have provided some of the impetus for Australia’s persistence. Dan Vettori, Chris Cairns, Shaun Pollock, Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff, Ravi Ashwin and especially, Jacques Kallis, have all had test success with bat & ball in recent years.

The experiment has continued with Tony Dodemaide, Andrew Symons, Andrew MacDonald, Shane Watson and (briefly) Cameron White and Moisés Henriques all getting a tryout in the role – with mostly mixed results at best. Regularly the selectors would compromise by banking on good second-change bowlers who could contribute with the bat the occasional valuable knock … Paul Reiffel and Andy “Mr 12th Man” Bichel come into this category.

Steve Smith at the onset of his first class career was thought more likely to be a test leg-spinner in the making, until he found his batting compass and soon after ascended to the captaincy of the national team. Currently, the hopes of those advocating the virtue of all-rounders in the Australian test and limited over sides lie with the likes of Mitch Marsh, James Faulkner and Glenn Maxwell.

The Human Bowling Machine from Ladywell SE13

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Biographical, Sport

Adil Rashid, currently displaying his bowling wares in the Big Bash League, recently took a five-wicket haul on test debut for England in the UAE. Nothing too sensational there you might say … except that he was the first English leg break bowler to bag a ‘Michelle’ (thank you Kerry O’Keefe!), five wickets in an innings, in a cricket test for 56 years! Its not that the English haven’t had any decent ‘leggies’ in that time – Robin Hobbs, Ian Salisbury, Chris Schofield, Scott Borthwick, have all been ‘capped’ for England – but when they have given them a go in the international arena they have done so ever so briefly, such is the closed mindset of the English establishment when it comes to leg-spinners!

imageEngland and Australia have diametrically opposed thought processes when it comes to assessing the value of leg-spinners. Everyone in Australia (and India) remembers Shane Warne’s test debut, 150-1 v India, grist for Ravi Shastri’s mill in 1992. And it didn’t get better in a hurry for Warne, after his first four tests he had taken precisely four wickets! But the Australian selectors, seeing the promise, persisted with Warne – and the rest was (leg spinning) history. The English authorities by contrast are neither brave or bold when it comes to encouraging and nurturing their young leggies, and it remains to be seen if England will persist with Rashid for longer than they have with other promising wrist spinners in the near past.

England invented the leg break and the ‘Bosie’ (the googly) and it is certainly not true that the country and its conditions are incompatible with good leg-spin bowling. Pakistan leggie Mustaq Ahmed in his legendary stint with Sussex took 478 wickets in five seasons of English country cricket (he remains the most recent bowler to take 100 wickets in an English FC season). Sussex won its first ever County Championship in 2003 and went on to win three in five years on the back of ‘Mushy’s’ persistent, penetrative leg breaks and wrong-uns! Indian leg-spinner Anil Kumble was similarly successful in his one (1995) season with Northamptonshire, topping the championship bowling list with 105 dismissals.

Tich Tich in action
° ° ° °
As to home-grown leggies, going deep into the history, England produced, among others, the most phenomenal, overachieving leg-spinner ever to grace an English ground! Alfred Percy Freeman, as his nickname (‘Tich’) implies, was tiny, 5’2″ (158 centimetres in the new language). Freeman achieved phenomenal success with Kent in the English County Championship in the inter-war years (see below). The attitude of the English selectors to Tich’s “class of his own” performances, emphasises what was to become the characteristic “head in the sand” reaction, a reluctance to embrace leg break bowling and give it a decent tryout.

In the historical record books of First class (FC) and English county cricket the nonpareil AP Freeman’s career include the following highlights:

:~ 3,776 wickets at 18.42 in FC career in 592 matches (6.38 wkts per match, strike rate: 40.9, economy rate 2.69) – second highest all-time wicket-taker to the great Wilfred Rhodes who took 4,204 wickets in 1,110 matches (ie, in 518 more matches)

:~ 304 wickets @ 18.05 in the 1928 English FC season – the highest of all-time & the only bowler to snare 300 in a single season (he also holds number 2 spot with 298 wkts @ 15.26 in 1933)

:~ in all FC matches: Five wickets in an innings, 386 times, & ten wickets in a match, 140 times! The next closest “five for” in an innings tally achieved in FC cricket is 287 instances (Rhodes), 99 in arrears of Tich. The next closest bowler for number of “ten fors” in matches made 91 (Charlie Parker)

:~ The only bowler to take 10 wkts in an innings thrice, the only bowler to take 17 wickets or more twice in a match

:~ Almost half of his 3,776 wkts were unassisted – the batsmen were either bowled, caught & bowled, LBW or hit-wicket

With such startling figures, leg-spinner or not, the selectors couldn’t ignore Tich forever. He was selected in an MCC ‘A’ tour to New Zealand in which he excelled on NZ pitches, followed by a full test tour to Australia in 1924-25 in which he made his debut at age 36. A combination of good, hard Australian wickets and the fact that Australian batsmen were brought up on a diet of leg spin meant that Freeman made very heavy weather of the series. Thereafter the national selectors choose the leg-spinner very irregularly. He did very well against South Africa and the West Indies, but was not considered for the tests against the Australians on either the 1926 or 1930 tours of the UK, despite getting a six for and a five for in the county games for Kent against the tourists. The selectors demonstrated a remarkable lack of perception in not showing a sustained faith in Freeman’s obvious talent and not backing him in tests, especially in English conditions. As things turned out, his record in tests suggest the magnitude of their error in judgement:

In just 12 tests, 66 wkts. ave: 25.86, strike rate: 56.5 BB: 71-7. Five wkts in inns: 5 times, Ten wkts in match: 3 times.

In the very limited opportunities afforded Freeman to represent his country, 66 wickets in tests at an average of 5.5 per match is more than respectable as returns go. In any form and at any level of the game, he was an out-and-out wicket-taking machine!

What accounts for the diminutive, right-arm Kent leggie’s exceptionality? Firstly, he was unswervingly consistent as a bowler … and he improved with age. In the eight seasons after he turned 40 in 1928, he took 2,090 wickets at 17.86, making him the leading wicket-taker in county cricket eight years in a row! Glenn McGrath has been described as ‘metronomic’ as a bowler, but it was Tich Freeman first who whirled them down with unerring accuracy like an automaton for 20 plus years. He commanded fantastic control of line and length. Although Tich was small, he was strong of hand and he had seemingly endless reserves of stamina, going on and on and on at the bowling crease. Freeman loved nothing more than to bowl and bowl and bowl. And he just hated being taken off. Regularly he would open the bowling in county games and bowl right through the innings!

Tich Freeman’s standard bowling strategy was one of relentlessly attacking the stumps. The line of his leg break (his “go-to” ball) was directed towards making the right-handed batsman play at the ball, rather than being able to just let it spin by harmlessly. He had an unorthodox leg-spinner’s grip and tended to not overuse the googly, but had an extremely hard-to-pick top-spinner.

imageSome cricket pundits, in contrasting Freeman to later generations of bowlers, have tried to explain away or diminish his extraordinary success by predictably referring to the poor state of uncovered wickets in his day. Or to the fact that he sent down such a sheer weight of numbers of balls in his career. It is undeniable that bad wickets were an advantage for bowlers in that era, but in response I would ask what was it, given the even playing field prevailing, that made Freeman so much more successful than his contemporary counterparts? This comparison accentuates the point: in that English season when he took 304 wickets, the entire Derbyshire team in the Championship by comparison took just 324 wickets! The next closest individual county bowler to his 304 victims in 1928 managed only 190 wickets.

And while it was true that Freeman bowled a hell of a lot of balls in FC cricket, 154 thousand plus, the point remains that at the same time he maintained an outstanding career strike rate, less than 41, which is right up there with the very best of bowlers. Tich Freeman was a seriously great English wrist spinner whose fame was largely restricted to his home county of Kent. But for the timidness and blinkered vision of the national selectors in truncating his test career, Freeman’s bowling feats could be as well celebrated and lionised internationally as they are today among the Kent faithful and in pockets of the county cricket fraternity.

Photo: Wisden