The Governor-General

Today the name Charlie Macartney is not one that easily trips off the tongue when the subject of great Australian cricketers is discussed. When the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame began his was as late as the twenty sixth name to be added. Macartney was the man who was at the centre of the only day of First Class cricket that a young Sir Donald Bradman saw, the final Test of the first ‘baggygreenwash’ in the 1920/21 series. Many years later the Don wrote I was privileged to see Macartney, in all his glory, making 170 runs. I can picture his delicate leg glances, and one flashing drive – not through the covers, but over the top. The memory can never have left him, Bradman always maintained that Macartney was the best number four batsman Australia had produced, rating him higher even than Greg Chappell.

Despite the great man’s plaudits Macartney is largely forgotten, no doubt largely because of those sometimes misleading things called statistics. There were 35 Tests over 19 years for Macartney, and a seemingly ordinary batting average of 41.78. His bowling is sometimes overlooked, and on one occasion he won a Test match with his orthodox left arm spin, but all told there were only 45 wickets, albeit at the respectable average of 27.55. Most of the wickets came early in Macartney’s career, more than half of them in his first two series, and the bulk of the runs, and indeed reputation came later. When Test cricket began again after the Great War Macartney was 34. He played in 14 more Tests in the next six years, and averaged all but 70 over the course of them.

Macartney was 21 when he was first selected for Australia, against AO Jones somewhat understrength England party of 1907/08. His role in that series was as an all-rounder although quite what was expected of him with the bat was not entirely clear – at various times he found himself at 1,2,3, 5,6 and 8 in the order. There were a couple of fifties as he averaged 27 with the bat, and his ten wickets cost 26 runs each, and those performances, coupled with a batting average of more than 50 in the following domestic season earned him a place in the party that Monty Noble led to England in 1909.

The first Test in 1909 was won by England by ten wickets. On a rain affected pitch Australia were dismissed for just 74 to which Macartney contributed 10 from number eight. He then opened the bowling and quickly removed Jack Hobbs, Archie MacLaren and Charles Fry as England slumped to 13-3, but that was the end of his success as England then did enough to win by ten wickets. Macartney scored just a single in the second innings, but in doing so was promoted in the order and became one of the select band to have opened batting and bowling in the same Test. In the second Test Australia returned the favour in winning by nine wickets. It was a fine performance by Australia but on a personal level an undistinguished one for Macartney who found himself batting at ten, from where he contributed just 5 runs, and he bowled eight wicketless overs.

In the third Test Macartney was elevated to number eight in the order, but innings of 4 and 18 did nothing to enhance his reputation. With the ball however he was Australia’s matchwinner as he took 11-85, still the best ever Test figures by an Australian left arm spinner. Macartney was a genuine slow bowler. He had a high arm action and bowled from sideways on in classical fashion. He varied his flight and pace well and, thanks to an exceptionally strong wrist had a very well disguised quicker delivery. The 7-58 that Macartney took in the England first innings were in part the product of a drying pitch, but he still had to take advantage and the match would remain comfortably the best of his career with the ball. The two remaining Tests were drawn to leave Australia as 2-1 winners. There were just two more wickets for Macartney although he did, with innings of 51 in the fourth Test and 50 in the fifth record his only two First Class fifties of the entire tour, a remarkably poor return for a batsman who was to scale the heights that he later did.

South Africa visited Australia in 1910/11 and Macartney scored his first Test century against them although he took just a single wicket. His batting form however deserted him the following season and he graced just the last of the five Tests against Plum Warner’s England, scoring 27 and 26 with a single wicket as the Englishmen extended their lead to 4-1. He was a little more successful in the 1912 Triangular Tournament in England, but had the Great War then ended the Macartney career there can be no doubt that by now he would simply be one of the game’s forgotten worthies.

After the war Macartney scored 19 and 69 in the first Test of the 1920/21 Ashes contest. Unfortunately for him however after that start he was laid low for some weeks with severe gastritis. He wasn’t well enough to play again until the final Test, when he played the first of his great innings in front of the 12 year old Bradman.

Australia did not need very many runs to beat England by 10 wickets and 8 wickets in the first two Tests of the 1921 summer, but Macartney scored plenty outside the Tests, and warmed up for the game against Nottinghamshire with 193 against Northamptonshire in two and a half hours. That summer wasn’t to prove a vintage one for Notts, but they were one of the big six of the county game, and finished the season in seventh. In those days matches between the counties and the tourists were eagerly awaited and the home sides always played their strongest eleven. The attack the Australians faced contained four Test caps, quick man Fred Barratt and three spinners. There was the off spin of Sam Staples and, left arm and right arm respectively, John Gunn and Tich Richmond turned the ball the other way. Notts’ most successful bowler in the game was another Test man, Joe Hardstaff senior, but his right arm seamers were strictly occasional, his 5-133 against the Aussies being the only five-fer he managed in a career that eventually extended to 377 First Class matches.

The tourists had a poor start as stand-in skipper Warren Bardsley, another man to whom the game pays for too little respect these days, was bowled by Richmond for a duck in the second over of the day. That dismissal brought Macartney to the crease, and he stayed just under four hours. There have of course been many much longer innings than that, but to this day only around forty innings have produced more than the 345 runs that Macartney scored that day. At the time it was the fifth highest score ever, and is still the highest in England by an Australian. There were four sixes and forty seven fours in the innings, but just three threes despite Trent Bridge being one of the largest grounds in the country. The weather was scorching hot, and Macartney clearly didn’t fancy too much running about.

Macartney made his runs out of 540 that were scored whilst he was at the wicket and the scorecard shows that he was then lbw to Hardstaff. Had he set his sights on overhauling the then record individual score of 424 that Archie MaLaren had scored for Lancashire against Somerset in 1895? And was it a poor decision? I have read accounts of the innings that answer both those questions in the affirmative, but Macartney himself made no such suggestion in his 1930 autobiography. The mere appearance of that book from a London publisher tells much of Macartney’s pre-eminence in itself. Ghosted autobiographies from top players were rare in those days. There had only been half a dozen since the Great War. The definitive answer, or as close as can be got to that almost a century on, comes in another of those rare period autobiographies, that of Arthur Carr, who was Notts captain that day. His account is that when one of his men suggested to Macartney that the 424 was in sight, his response was I can’t – my feet won’t let me. The suggestion of a poor decision comes from a book written by the Australian manager, Sydney Smith, who describes Macartney playing the ball with his bat. He cannot of course have been in a particularly good position to make that judgment.

By the end of the first day Australia had piled up 608/7 and they tormented the Notts side by batting on next day, eventually being all out for 675. It must have been a good wicket, but the Notts batsmen surrendered tamely twice to lose by the eye-watering margin of an innings and 517. Macartney was not called upon to turn his arm over. Carr in particular, an amateur but one with the mindset of a Jardine, must have been glad to see the back of the Australians. With 15 and 31 he was comfortably his side’s top scorer in the match. Another occasional seamer he had bowled a single over in the match, and gone for 24, and therein lies another illustration of the speed with which Macartney was batting. It was ‘Nip’ Pellew who feasted on the Notts skippers offerings, and he raced to a rapid 100 before he was dismissed. That was out of 241 however – he still couldn’t keep up with Macartney. And Macartney still hadn’t finished with Carr, as the Notts man found out five years later.

But he had at least finished with him for 1921, although not with England. The third Test was taken at an apparent canter as well, by 219 runs, but it wasn’t quite as easy as that suggests. Macartney scored 115, surprisingly the only Australian century of the series, and it wasn’t easy, tricky conditions and good bowling meaning the innings took him over three hours. The fourth and fifth Tests were drawn as England under new skipper Lionel Tennyson looked more a team and less a rabble, but Australia were not troubled unduly. Macartney ended the tour with more than 2,300 runs at nearly 60 with eight centuries, all of them much acclaimed. To the surprise of none he was chosen by the editor of Wisden as one of the Five Cricketers of the Year, and the Almanack described him as by many degrees the most brilliant and individual batsman of the present day, although a caveat summarised what had changed since the pre-war Macartney; he is a law to himself – the triumph of individualism is not a model to be copied – young batsmen who try to imitate him closely will in 19 cases out of 20 fail, his success being so largely dependent upon extraordinary quickness of eye, hand and foot. 

In what was a very long tour for the Australians they had three Tests to play in South Africa on their way back. In the first the home side hung on in the end for a draw after a century and a half century from a Macartney who was not 100% fit. He missed the second Test, also drawn, as a result and then set up the decisive victory in the final Test, in part with an innings of 44 in his only visit to the crease, but in the main with his 5-40 in the South African second innings. It was his first telling contribution to a Test with the ball since 1909, and the last he would make.

In an era when international tours were few and far between Macartney and Australia would have no more series before the next battle for the Ashes in 1924/25. Herbert Sutcliffe and Jack Hobbs made eight centuries between them but Australia still won 4-1. There was no involvement for Macartney however as he missed almost the entire season. There were stories of alcohol problems and a breakdown in his mental health, both far fetched but, given that Macartney was a teetotaller, particularly the former. The truth was that he had a leg ulcer that turned septic and in those days before anti-biotics it proved tricky to shift. It had however gone by the following domestic season of 1925/26, and it was business as usual. Macartney averaged more than 88 and, despite the fact that he would turn 40 in June, his selection for the 1926 tour of England was a formality.

The 1926 series was a historic one because England finally regained the Ashes for the first time since the Great War, but Australia’s defeat was no fault of Macartney’s, as he averaged more than 94. The first Test saw just a few overs of England’s innings played, before the second brought him the first of three centuries in the series. The game finished as a draw, but England might have had a chance had Macartney not scored an unbeaten 133 out of their second innings 194-5. But it was the third Test at Headingley where Macartney enjoyed his finest hour in Test cricket.

England’s captain for this series was Carr and the third Test proved to be something of a nightmare for him. The afternoon before the match saw a thunderstorm, and a sticky wicket for the first day was confidently expected. Carr put Australia in after winning the toss and reaped an immediate reward when Bardsley snicked the first ball of the match from Maurice Tate into the safe hands of Sutcliffe at slip. It might have been 2-2 at the end of the over as Macartney edged the ball into and out of Carr’s hands at third slip. To further depress Carr the expected sunshine, and accordingly the sticky wicket never materialised. After the game at Trent Bridge five years earlier Carr must have feared the worst, and he certainly got it. Before that morning only one man, Victor Trumper, had ever scored a century before lunch on the first day of a Test. Macartney became the second in a brilliant display.

Former Australian skipper Monty Noble described the innings as the nearest approach to Trumper’s genius that I have ever seen, and was one of the best ever played in a Test match. The conditions were not altogether easy for run-getting, but Macartney made it look ridiculously easy by his courage, resource and cleverness. For the doyen of English cricket writers, Neville Cardus, Macartney’s knock was one of the most marvellous of our time – an unforgettable blend of skill, bravery, strength, lightness, speed, defiance, disdain, impudence, wit, and masterfulness. He was finally dismissed after less than three hours for 151, scored out of 235, and Australia went on to total 494. England had to follow on, but comfortably saved the game.

Rain marred the fourth Test, although without yet another Macartney century Australia might have struggled. One English newspaper, whilst accepting that this effort was not quite up there with the two previous hundreds, reported the variety of his most punishing shots is ample proof of what a wonderful batsman he is, and how perfect was his timing. With equal facility he glided to fine leg, hooked, pulled, drove and cut square and late. In the final Test however Macartney could contribute just 25 and 16, and a new England side led by Percy Chapman took the match and the series.

The domestic season that followed the 1926 tour was the end of Macartney’s Sheffield Shield career and he also enjoyed a testimonial that brought him what at the time was a very respectable sum of around £2,500. That didn’t however mark the end of Macartney’s cricket. In 1927/28 he was a member of a strong touring party that visited Malaya at the invitation of the Singapore Cricket Club. Eight years later, by which time Macartney was pushing 50, he toured India and Sri Lanka with a party led by former Test player and Victoria skipper Jack Ryder. The party was a strong one with a nucleus of Test players albeit in the main, like Macartney and Ryder, very much at the veteran stage. There was a series of four games against the full strength of India with two wins to each side. Macartney was, understandably, not quite the man he had been but he made a real contribution with both bat and ball and, perhaps more importantly, proved immensely popular wherever the party went.

Outside the game it is not entirely clear what Macartney did after he retired from the First Class game. Certainly there was some writing, and he accompanied the Australian sides that toured England in 1939 and 1938. During the Second World War despite his advancing years he served in a non-combatant role in the AIF. In his declining years in the 1950s Macartney worked part time as a personnel officer in a local hospital in Sydney although his happiness was marred by the loss of his wife. The Governor General himself passed away in 1958 at the age of 72. Reaction was muted and the tributes to the great cricketer were modest in both size and their location in the newspapers of the day. The contrast with the news of the passing of Macartney’s great friend Trumper was stark, Vic’s early death in 1915 having displaced news of the Gallipoli campaign from the front pages of newspapers.

I have already expressed the view that Macartney’s career statistics, to those interested in little more than such matter, do not leap out of the records book and consequently his relative anonymity persists and perhaps deepened. There is perhaps a comparison to be drawn with Herbert Sutcliffe. In my youth, perhaps because of the manner in which he made his runs, Sutcliffe was not recognised as one of the game’s greats. To a 21^st century audience however, not influenced by stories of his largely workmanlike batting, he is simply the man whose Test average never dropped under 60, and it is that place at the top of the tree that means that Sutcliffe’s name is much better known now than it was in my youth.

There is another point that may have stopped Macartney’s name being revered in the same way as others, and the heroic name of Trumper, whose career batting average is a couple of points lower than Macartney’s looms large. As the man who eventually produced the first and so far only biography of Macartney, Peter Sharpham, points out one cannot help but wonder just how pleasant a person Macartney was. He certainly seems not to have been found wanting in the self-confidence department, and that nickname, well used at the time, ‘The Governor-General’, does suggest a certain arrogance. But we must leave that question there. There is no recording of any sort of interview (and far worse no footage of Macartney at the crease), and whilst a handful of his contemporaries wrote autobiographies the days of Kevin Pietersen feeling able to lambast teammates and opponents were a long way in the future, and a reader gleans little of Macartney the man from their books. But to a man his opponents waxed lyrical about Macartney’s batting, and as late as 1936 the former Lancashire and England bowler Ciss Parkin wrote that he was a far better batsman than Bradman is.