Colin Mc Cool - English Cricket

English Cricket

Prior to the 1953 Australian team to tour England, McCool signed a professional contract with Lancashire League team East Lancashire, replacing fellow Australian leg spinner Bruce Dooland. In his first season in the league, he was the leading wicket-taker with 93 wickets at the low average of 10.2 runs per wicket, and he also made 678 runs at an average of 33.9. The following year, he played less often: his 547 runs came at the better average of 42.1 but his 52 wickets cost 13.1 apiece, and East Lancashire, who had finished either first or second in the Championship ten times in the previous twelve seasons, finished 10th out of 14. He did not return to East Lancashire for the 1955 season due to being contracted to play county cricket for Somerset. The cricket writer Alan Gibson, who knew McCool well, wrote that "after he had made the decision to come, an extension of the qualifying period for overseas cricketers kept him waiting even longer".

Delayed by the change to the rules, McCool had a five-year stint from 1956 in English county cricket. Somerset, having finished on the bottom of the County Championship table for the four years between 1952–1955, had embarked on a renewal programme. Part of the programme involved a vigorous recruiting campaign, including an offer to McCool that saw him return to first-class cricket at the age of 39.

At Somerset, McCool was an instant success as a batsman, scoring 1,967 runs in his first season, including three centuries and a highest score of 141. After four seasons, Somerset came off the bottom of the County Championship (to 15th out of 17), and Wisden was in no doubt of McCool's influence: "Much of the credit for the all-round improvement went to one man – McCool," it wrote. "At the start of the season it was hoped that the former Australian Test leg-break bowler would lend power and variety to the attack. From that viewpoint his 45 wickets at over thirty runs apiece might be counted disappointing. But with the bat McCool exceeded all expectations. He was one of the most consistent scorers in the country and he failed by only 34 to reach 2,000 runs in his first season of county cricket. McCool was the backbone of a mediocre batting side, and he never departed from his natural attacking style." Against the touring Australians that season he made 90 and 116, the first innings 90 coming out of 139 in two-and-a-half hours and including 15 fours, the second innings century out of 167 in just 95 minutes, with four sixes and 14 fours. Wisden reported that he was "very severe on and ".

Over the 1956/57 new year, McCool was one of a party of 12 cricketers, all but one of them Test players, who made a brief trip to India to play two first-class matches in celebration of the silver jubilee of the Bengal Cricket Association in a side raised by the Lancashire secretary Geoffrey Howard. McCool did not play in the first match and in the second, he replaced Jock Livingston, the team's only wicketkeeper, who had been taken ill during the first game. McCool made only 23 and 1 with the bat, but he stumped Vinoo Mankad off the bowling of Dooland, one of only two stumpings in his career as a very occasional wicketkeeper.

Back in England in 1957 he was joined at Taunton by another Australian, Bill Alley, but still finished as the leading scorer for the county with 1,678 runs in all matches, to go with 44 wickets. In the wet summer of 1958 Somerset finished third in the Championship, their highest position since 1892. McCool's contribution was 1,590 runs and 46 wickets at, for him, the low average of 23 runs each. In this season, McCool made his highest score for Somerset – 169 out of a total of 314 against Worcestershire at Stourbridge – and in the last match of the season he produced his best bowling figures of his career, taking eight second-innings Nottinghamshire wickets for 74 runs on what Wisden described as "a sporting pitch".

In contrast to 1958, the 1959 season was hot and dry and McCool's figures improved: he made 1769 runs at an average of more than 40 runs per innings and took 64 first-class wickets, more than in any other Somerset season. McCool's final season with Somerset before his retirement was 1960, and he signed off with 1,222 runs and 29 wickets.

In 138 matches across the five seasons for Somerset, McCool made 7,913 runs at an average of 33.82. He also took 219 wickets at 28.05 but in his five years with the county he was never the first-choice spin bowler: in his first two seasons, Somerset used Australian-born slow left-arm orthodox bowler John McMahon as the main spin bowler, with young off-spin bowler Brian Langford also bowling more than McCool. When McMahon left, Langford took over as the top spin bowler, and by 1960 was bowling four times the number of overs that McCool took. But McCool had also lost some of his control at this stage: "He could do beguiling things with the ball, though length and line seemed to become a decreasing consideration," says the history of Somerset cricket. He also made 146 catches, many of them at first slip, where he stood "rather deeper than usual". His influence on Somerset's recovery from the trough of the early 1950s was considerable. A later Somerset history says: "Occasionally some of the younger pros didn't relish the way he treated them. Maybe they also resented that his salary was well in excess of their own. But their respect for his competitive approach and sheer experience was undeniable."