Arthur Morris - After Cricket

After Cricket

With his wife's death imminent, Morris organised the couple's return to Britain with financial help from Hassett. He worked as a cricket reporter for London's Daily Express during the 1956 Ashes tour while his wife was reunited with her family for the last time. She died soon after they returned to Australia at the end of the tour, aged just 33. They had been married only 18 months.

In the wake of his personal loss, Morris, known for his sincerity and high personal values, received many offers of work and financial assistance. With a reference from English cricketer Doug Insole, Morris joined British engineering company George Wimpey for a few years. He then moved back to Sydney to take up a public relations job with security group Wormald International where he worked until his retirement in the late 1980s. He was appointed to the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust in 1965 and served there for 22 years, eight of them as deputy chairman. During this time, the ground was modernised and the Bradman Stand erected. In 1968, Morris met and married his second wife Judith Menmuir. He was awarded the MBE in 1974 for services to sport. In late 1989, Morris and his wife retired to the town of Cessnock in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney. He continued to play tennis into his late seventies and enjoyed watching Test cricket although he refused to watch One day cricket, introduced after his playing days, due to his preference for tradition.

In 2001, he was inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame alongside Bill Woodfull, the fourteenth and fifteenth players to be inducted. In 2000, he was named in the Australian Cricket Board's Team of the Century. Morris was named as an opening batsman in Bradman's selection of his greatest team in Test history. Bradman described him as the "best left-hand option to open an innings" and characterised his temperament as "ideal". On the death of Sam Loxton in December 2011, he became Australia's oldest living Test cricketer.

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