Stan McCabe - a great man in crisis for Australia

By A.C. DE Silva

Great name in cricket.... There are many great cricketers whose names have been flashed in the newspapers in the past for there deeds. Sir Donald Bradman of Australia , Sir Garfield Sobers of the West Indies, Keith Miller of Australia, Sunil Gavaskar of India, and a whole lot of others whose deeds have been recorded from time to time .

However, there has been one name - Stan Mccabe whose name has not been heard though he has been a fine batsman in the hey -days.

The cricket genius of McCabe merges itself without fuss or bother into three epochial events- Sydney (1932), Johannesburg ( 1935), and Nottingham (1938)- and this was written by a great cricketer of the past Jack Fingleton of Australiawhose name is well known and written about in the cricket6 battle field.

McCabe could well go down to pastenty as McCabe of Sydney Cricket Ground, McCabe of the Wanderers and McCabe of Trent Bridge. At each of three citadels of cricket he played a Test innings of great importance . All three were so elegant and monumental that those who saw them hesitate to say that any one was greater than the others.

Unlike many other important innings which probably do not reveal their value on paper , McCabe's three immediately stand out when set down in relation to his team's total, for they tell clearly how he dominated the play and monopolised the scene.

McCabe in full flight

At Sydney , against the full cry of Jardine's bodyline tactics , McCabe made 187 not out in a total of 360 at Johannesburg , in deplorable light and on a badly worn wicket, he made 189 not out of his team's 2 for 274; at Trent Bridge he made 232 of Australia's 411 after the five other acknowledged batsmen of the side , including Bradman, had fallen for only 151.

In all those games Australia had it's back to the wall , a point worth particular notice , because in such circumstances McCabe showed out in his best colours.

At Sydney , with Bradman standing out of the Australian team through illness , Mccabe came to the wicket with the scoreboard showing 87 for 4.

England's Harold Larwood had taken three of the four and bodyline had paralysed most of the Australians in preceding games. At Johannesburg he came to the crease when Australia needed 382 runs with 9 wickets in hand on a tattered wicket that had already produced 898 runs.

At Nottingham on the Trent Bridge wicket , when Mccabe attacked the the English bowling with one of the most vicious innings known to the game , Australia was facing ignominy with the scoreboard reading 151 for 5 in answer to England's mammoth total of 658 for 8 declared.

Those facts prove , therefore, that Mccabe was a great man in a crisis. He played all his cricket in them time of Bradman and much of it in the period of Ponsford - which is another way of suggesting that there had been more crisis it would be reasonable to assume there would have been more Mccabe epics, for it can never be assessed how the dominating brilliance of Bradman, in particular, dimmed the glory of McCabe.