Jack Crawford (cricketer) - Later Career

Later Career

In Australia, Crawford continued his first-class career with South Australia in the Sheffield Shield, Australia's first-class competition. Over four seasons, he played 22 matches for the team, scoring 1,512 runs at an average of 40.86 and taking 120 wickets at 23.86. Such a performance would probably have earned him Test selection for Australia if he had been Australian, and Wisden noted that his record was impressive in Australian cricket. In the event, he played some representative cricket. When England toured Australia in 1911–12, Crawford played against them for an Australian XI at Brisbane and scored 110 in as many minutes against bowlers including Sydney Barnes, at the time regarded as the greatest bowler in the world. In 1913, his last season in Australia, Crawford played for a team representing the Rest of Australia against New South Wales and later that year, toured North America with an Australian team. In the 1913–14 season, Crawford played for an Australian team which toured New Zealand. In first-class games on this tour he took 21 wickets and scored a century but his most notable innings came in a minor match. Against South Canterbury, he scored 354 in five-and-a-quarter hours, striking 14 sixes and 45 fours. He and Victor Trumper shared a partnership of 298 in 69 minutes, and Monty Noble helped him to score 50 runs in 9 minutes as the Australian team scored 922 for nine. During 1914–15, Crawford played for Otago in New Zealand, appearing in four first-class games in which he scored 337 runs and took 30 wickets. In 1918, he played two first-class games in New Zealand for Wellington.

After the First World War, Crawford returned to live in England. Having settled his disagreement with Surrey, he resumed his English first-class career in 1919. After appearing for the Gentlemen against the Players, he returned to play for Surrey against the Australian Imperial Forces. He scored 144 not out, which was later described by Wisden as the innings of his life. Surrey were 26 for five in reply to the tourists' innings of 436 when Crawford came in to bat. Neville Cardus reported: " fell upon the advancing Australian attack, and by driving seldom equalled, threw it back." He more than doubled his score after the ninth wicket had fallen, hitting 73 out of the last 80 runs scored in 35 minutes to take Surrey past the target required to avoid the follow-on. He later scored 92 against Yorkshire and playing against Kent, scored 48 not out as Jack Hobbs and he scored 96 in 32 minutes in the final innings as Surrey chased a total which seemed impossible to achieve in the little time remaining. In total, Crawford played in eight games in 1919, scoring 488 runs and taking 20 wickets. However, he played only four more times in first-class cricket; twice in 1920 and twice in 1921. One match was for Surrey against the Australian touring team of 1921 and the others were for teams representing the Gentlemen. In all first-class cricket, Crawford scored 9,488 runs at an average of 32.60 and took 815 wickets at 20.66.

Neither Crawford's obituary in Wisden nor that in The Times gives any details about the remainder of Crawford's life. He died, aged 76, in a Surrey hospital on 2 May 1963.