Spiderlounge
Member
If you lot are all going to start threads about various spinners, I'm not going to let my beloved Mailey be forgotten!
Arthur Alfred Mailey was a right-handed leg-break/googly bowler for NSW and Australia playing First Class cricket from 1912 to 1930 during which he played 21 Tests from 1920 to 1926 taking 99 wickets at 33.91. By all accounts he turned the ball a long way, could drift the ball and had an excellent googly. His chief flaw was he couldn't stick to a good length, but his chief strength was that he was a wonderful personality and he never gave up. No less a player than Wilfred "the Colossus" Rhodes said Mailey could have figures of 100/0 and still end the innings with 130/6.
Mailey has three major feathers in his cap: the best bowling figures by any Australian in Tests (9/121 vs England in 1920/21), a perfect 10 in First Class cricket (10/66 vs Gloucestershire in 1921) and leading wicket-taker in the OTHER Australian team to record an Ashes whitewash (36 in 1920/21). He also has the rather more dubious honour of the most expensive bowling analysis in all First Class cricket - 4 for 362 as Victoria made a record 1,107 runs, to which Mailey remarked that he would have fared better if three easy catches hadn't been dropped, "two by a man in the pavilion wearing a bowler hat" and a third by a team-mate whom he consoled with the words "I'm expecting to take a wicket any day now..."
After retiring from playing he made his living as a cricket writer and cartoonist. His books of cartoons are now sought-after collectors' items, and he also wrote two other books, "And then came Larwood" (a first-hand acount of the Bodyline series) and his Autobiography "10 for 66 and all that". They are both delightfully written, and to prove it here is the (allegedly apocryphal) story of the day he bowled at his great hero Vic Trumper: http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/story/211734.html
Mailey is my all-time favourite bowler, in the same way that we all know one or two people here are rather fond of CV Grimmett, so if anyone can find any links to information about him I'd love to see it!
Arthur Alfred Mailey was a right-handed leg-break/googly bowler for NSW and Australia playing First Class cricket from 1912 to 1930 during which he played 21 Tests from 1920 to 1926 taking 99 wickets at 33.91. By all accounts he turned the ball a long way, could drift the ball and had an excellent googly. His chief flaw was he couldn't stick to a good length, but his chief strength was that he was a wonderful personality and he never gave up. No less a player than Wilfred "the Colossus" Rhodes said Mailey could have figures of 100/0 and still end the innings with 130/6.
Mailey has three major feathers in his cap: the best bowling figures by any Australian in Tests (9/121 vs England in 1920/21), a perfect 10 in First Class cricket (10/66 vs Gloucestershire in 1921) and leading wicket-taker in the OTHER Australian team to record an Ashes whitewash (36 in 1920/21). He also has the rather more dubious honour of the most expensive bowling analysis in all First Class cricket - 4 for 362 as Victoria made a record 1,107 runs, to which Mailey remarked that he would have fared better if three easy catches hadn't been dropped, "two by a man in the pavilion wearing a bowler hat" and a third by a team-mate whom he consoled with the words "I'm expecting to take a wicket any day now..."
After retiring from playing he made his living as a cricket writer and cartoonist. His books of cartoons are now sought-after collectors' items, and he also wrote two other books, "And then came Larwood" (a first-hand acount of the Bodyline series) and his Autobiography "10 for 66 and all that". They are both delightfully written, and to prove it here is the (allegedly apocryphal) story of the day he bowled at his great hero Vic Trumper: http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/story/211734.html
Mailey is my all-time favourite bowler, in the same way that we all know one or two people here are rather fond of CV Grimmett, so if anyone can find any links to information about him I'd love to see it!
