The Archie Jackson story

FRANK GOUGH, the Queensland allrounder, introduced them at a tennis party over the weekend. Phyllis was only 18, and, having been trained in ballet, had found success in Sydney with an adagio dance act with her brother Ray. Hardly 5 ft tall, she had the gaiety and sparkle that matched Archie's temperament perfectly.

Though most at home on stage, she loved cricket, probably owing her enthusiasm to her mother. Mrs Thomas, who as a girl in Bendigo had lived next door to Harry Trott, the old Australian captain, had always been keen on the game, and for a number of years helped prepare the players' teas at Windsor Park, where Northern Suburbs played.

So Brisbane now lured Archie Jackson with a romantic appeal beyond anticipation.

He was working at Anthony Horderns now, and drawing large crowds to the Sydney store to watch him bat in the nets. He had made a little extra money by putting his name on Surridge bats, though it seems his addiction to an old favourite that refused to wear out prevented him from actually using one.

Bill Hunt kept that last bat of Archie's, and used to draw attention to a flaw along the inside edge - a split which, if hit, would surely cause several inches to flake away: `But he didn't edge'em down the leg side. He might've got out in the slips occasionally, but his leg glances were perfect. Really perfect!'

The blade has a concave at the meat which tells of a thousand accurate strokes, and the perished rubber grip resembles an aerial view of the Amazon delta, just to remind its handler that much time has passed since it was unwrapped and given its preparatory oiling. It is a rousing relic.

The stricken cricketer picked up in health sufficiently to take part in a `missionary' tour of North Queensland in March 1931 with a collection of players led by Alan Kippax, and showing extraordinary stamina and application, he broke Victor Trumper's `record' of 1046 runs by 163. He came back sunburnt and apparently fit and well, even though it had been an arduous expedition.

They travelled for almost a week to reach their starting point - Cairns- sailing via Brisbane and Townsville, and motoring through the thick tropical country of the Atherton Tablelands, along one 12-mile stretch of road which, someone dazedly discovered, incorporated 602 bends. On Malanda's concrete wicket Jackson made 61.

This he followed with 158 (the last 50 in 10 minutes) and 51 and out (in eight minutes) at Cairns, delighting the capacity crowd and playing through showers of rain that could only have exacerbated his condition.

Runs were three-a-minute all through the tour, and the light-hearted cricket of Kippax, Bradman, McCabe, Jackson, Fairfax and Wendell Bill filled the collection boxes and provided a nett profit of £3000 which in due course was laid out on turf wickets and general improvements. The stars were paid 10 shillings a day against loss of salary, and all travelling and accommodation expenses.

From Cairns they moved on to Innisfail, the centre of the sugar industry, where the townsfolk were complaining of a dry summer. The night after the team left 10 inches of rain fell - a phenomenon which might well have added to their mystique.

More of Archie's letters survive from this period. One, written from Innisfail, is disarmingly frank:

Our first game against Eacham at Malanda was very funny. The grass was long and wet so that to score a boundary the ball had to be lifted. Anyway, they batted first and reached 141. Kippax sent the other chaps in to keep their wickets intact so as we could bat in the afternoon. However, before long four were down for 15.

A sidelight of the match at Malanda was Jackson's planting of a tree to make the team's visit. A leaf from the tree was later sent to Phyl, who placed it in a small scrapbook, where it remains a sweet link with a merry cricket tour long ago.

A seven-hour train journey had the players in Townsville for two two-day matches, the second, against a North Queensland representative Xl, seeing four centuries from the NSW side - Jackson 172. Then, after traversing more jungle, canefields and banana plantations, they played on Ayr's new turf pitch, where Bradman made the match his own, scoring 107 and taking 6 for 23.

Another frenzied welcome at Bowen turned to delight in another messacre by the touring players. This time McCabe, Kippax and Jackson made centuries.

They travelled overnight to Mackay and ran into more heavy rain, then left at 4.30 in the morning for another long, tiring haul to Rockhampton and, at last, three days' freedom, most of which was spent at the beach. They were still 19 days from Brisbane, the last stop. Bradman had the misfortune - or merciful fortune - to sprain his ankle (not for the last time) in a hole at mid-on during the Rockhampton match, and had to remain behind.

But the fireworks continued at Gympie, where McCabe belted 173, including 40 off an over. By the time they reached Ipswich most of them were exhausted, and Archie Jackson poured it all out in another letter to Bill:

With all due modesty, I have had a most successful tour and have scored 1100 runs average 93.00, with six centuries. I am, of course, heading both aggregate and average, and may just possibly scrape together another century before the tour definitely concludes.

I was extremely disappointed at the failure of Balmain in the last two rounds, but I'm sure they will do much better next year.

You certainly had a particularly pleasant season, and you surely must be given a chance against the Sth Africans. If, because of the exchange, they cannot fulfil their itinerary in Australia, it is quite possible that we may go to Africa. How would you like the trip, Bill? It would certainly be a great one from every point of view, and if you were one of the tourists it would make you a star.

What have you to tell me that is so interesting regarding the girl opposite? Have you arranged our wedding, or merely fixed our engagement? However I am still interested. After all it is most likely worth exploring.

It was a happy, hopeful, teasing letter from a man full of the joys of living.

He kept in trim during the 1931 winter with plenty of golf and tennis, which also helped keep his mind off the economic crisis. The Government Savings Bank had frozen depositors' funds, and so tight was the situation that he had to decline the offer of his friend Harry Mills to send a gift of a wireless from England because of the excise duty of £15 payable in Sydney.

Harry sent the set all the same, and in the letter of thanks Archie remarked on the mildness of the Australian winter: `It is to be hoped that summer proves just as mild. Sometimes we get some hellish heatwaves that make a fellow pine for the cold of England, though people are never satisfied, are they?'

His recurring sickness, still only at the nuisance level and not yet diagnosed as anything critical, had lapsed once more into inertia as the 1931-32 cricket season opened, though at least one friend was struck by the profusion of medicine bottles in Archie's room.

He made a lot of runs on a country tour with Alan Kippax's side, and when he played a showpiece innings of 183 for Balmain - his highest ever - against Gordon he and his supporters had every hope and expectation that he would feature prominently for State and country against the visiting South Africans.

He was selected for the opening Sheffield Shield match of the season and travelled with the team to Brisbane, but having just recovered from a bout of influenza he had the misfortune to be caught in a rain-squall while crossing the Hawkesbury River, and his chest ailment was activated.

Phyl sat with her lunch-box and clapped with the crowd as the NSW players took the field at Brisbane; then she noticed Archie was not among them, and as she was wondering what could have happened to him Alan Fairfax came over and broke the news that Archie had brought up blood, collapsed and been rushed to hospital. Would she get some pyjamas for him?

It was a dreadful shock, and both teams were plunged into heavy gloom when the NSW manager told them.

The emergency dealt with, a sensational match ensued: Eddie Gilbert, the Aboriginal, bowling with lethal speed and bounce, dismissed Bradman for a duck, and Kippax suffered a jagged cut on the temple after mis-hooking Thurlow (and finished up in the next hospital bed to Archie's, according to Australian Cricketer magazine magazine). McCabe played what he always considered the innings of his life, rising from his team's desperate plight to score an undefeated 229; and Jackson's replacement, Jack Fingleton, made a dour 93.

Jackson, who, to judge from a later letter, believed himself to be a flu victim, was discharged from hospital after five days and returned to Sydney with the team.

NEXT MONTH: Confined in a sanitorium