Hugh Trumble - Legacy and Statistical Analysis

Legacy and Statistical Analysis

"The first of the great off spinners of the Test-match age", in 32 Tests, Trumble took 141 wickets at an average of just over 20 runs per wicket. He took 5 wickets in an innings on nine occasions and 10 wickets in a match three times. On retirement, he had taken more wickets in Test cricket than any other player; a record he held for nearly 10 years until surpassed by Sydney Barnes. It wasn't until Dennis Lillee 75 years later that anyone was able to better Trumble's 141 wickets against England. While mainly a bowler, Trumble batted well enough to make 851 runs in Test cricket at an average of 19.79 with a highest score of 70. Trumble was also prolific at first-class level. He took 929 wickets, including 5 wickets in an innings on 69 occasions, and as a batsman, he made 5,395 runs with three centuries and a highest score of 107. For Melbourne Cricket Club, he took just under 400 wickets and scored more than 3,000 runs; winning the club best bowling average on six occasions and the best batting average once.

Trumble was particularly effective in England. After taking 52 wickets on his first tour of England in 1890, his other four visits to England—in 1893, 1896, 1899 and 1902—saw him take over 100 wickets in first-class matches. In 1899, he scored 1,183 runs making him one of only four Australians, with George Giffen, Warwick Armstrong (both three times) and Jack Gregory, to take over 100 wickets and make over 1,000 runs on a tour of England.

The ICC player rankings have been applied retrospectively to cricket history and Trumble achieved the top ranking as a bowler. By June 1896, he was ranked fifth in the world and never again slipped lower; from 1899 until his retirement he was the first or second best bowler in the world according to the ratings. As a batsman, Trumble's ranking peaked at twelfth in the world after the Third Test in Adelaide in 1901–02.

Trumble was the first player to take two hat-tricks in Test cricket. Both hat-tricks were taken against England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where Trumble played his club cricket. Hat-tricks are extremely rare; in over 131 years of Test cricket to March 2008, there had only been 37 Test hat-tricks and only Jimmy Matthews and Wasim Akram been able to repeat Trumble's feat of taking a second.