Aussie Jimmy Mathews - a double 'hat-trick' in one day against South
Africa
by A. C. de Silva
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Jimmy Matthews - a double
hat-trick
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CRICKET: Getting wickets in Tests is an unending joy for the bowlers.
Then getting a double hat-trick in one Test calls for celebration from
the side that produced the champion bowler. Both feats come on the same
day. So, it was for Australia's T. Jimmy Mathews in the 1912 Triangular
Tournament also involving England and South Africa.
Mathews earned everlasting fame at Old Trafford by getting a
hat-trick twice in one match for Australia against South Africa. His
feat is unparalled in Test cricket and it occurred in the first match of
the competition.
Mathews with his slow right-arm bowling, dismissed the last three
batsmen in South Africa's first innings, and in the follow-on, when five
wickets were down for 70, he repeated the feat of dismissing three men
with successive balls. That was the extent of his effectiveness in that
encounter, and the series of six matches, which all three countries
contested, brought him no more than 15 wickets altogether, but his
average of 17 was less than that for the 25 taken by W. J. Whitty and
for the 19 by R. Hazlitt.
During the whole of that tour in England, Mathews' bowling earned him
85 wickets at 19.37 each, while he scored 584 runs, average 18.25.
He had only made his Test debut the previous winter doing enough in
the last three Tests against England to win selection for the tour.
A wet summer certainly did not help the team, captained by S. E.
Gregory, and far from representing the full strength of Australia, but
Mathews played up to his reputation as a very useful all-round
cricketer.
England easily won the three-cornered rubber with four victories and
two draws.
The Victorian handbook shows that for his State, Mathews scored 1,334
runs, average 30.31 and took 79 wickets at 29.50 each during a short
career in first-class cricket.
After serving in the First World War, he became a Curator of the
Williamstown ground, the home of the club for which Mathews played most
of his cricket.
He died on October 14th in 1943 in Caulfield Military Hospital,
Melbourne, aged 59 years 194 days. At the time of his death, three of
his sons were on active service. |
