Jack Fingleton - Test Recall

Test Recall

With retirements of both Woodfull and Ponsford following the 1934 tour to England, positions at the top of the Australia's batting order became available. Fingleton also found state cricket more attractive now that Bradman had decided to move to South Australia to take up stockbroking. Fingleton responded to his omission from the Ashes tour by leading the run-scoring aggregates in the 1934–35 season. He scored 880 runs at 58.66 with four centuries and four fifties, almost 200 runs more than the second most prolific batsman, Brown. After Fingleton started the summer with a fifty in Woodfull's testimonial match, the pair started the Shield campaign with a 249-run stand in New South Wales' first match of the season against South Australia, both scoring centuries in an innings victory. Fingleton made 134 in just over three hours. Fingleton reached 49 at least once in the remaining five matches, including a 108 against Queensland. Despite the form of the openers, New South Wales failed to win the Sheffield Shield after losing both of their matches against Victoria. Fingleton ended the season with consecutive centuries, 124 and 100, against Western Australia, and took the first of two first-class wickets in his career in the first of the two matches.

As a result of his performances, Fingleton was recalled to the Test team for the tour of South Africa in 1935–36, where he partnered Brown at the top of the innings. Under normal circumstances, the Australians would have been captained by Fingleton's rival Bradman, who had been vice-captain to Woodfull. However, Bradman was unable to tour for medical reasons and Vic Richardson led the team instead. With Bradman out of the way, the tour was to be the most prolific and peaceful phase of Fingleton's international career and included several large opening stands with Brown. During the tour, Fingleton played with an attacking flair that contrasted with his established reputation for doggedness. Fof Fingleton, it was the happiest tour he had been on, in large part due to Bradman's absence.

Fingleton nearly failed to make the trip. His newspaper editor Eric Baume ordered to write a column attacking the Australian Board of Control for vetoing players from going on a private tour of India, threatening to sack him if he refused—criticism of the board typically resulted in exclusion from selection. Fingleton was reluctant to comply, and was reprieved when the editor-in-chief overruled Baume.

Fingleton scored 66 for the Australians in an innings victory over Western Australia before sailing for South Africa. It was to be the start of a very productive campaign. In the three matches leading up to the Tests, against Natal, Western Province and Transvaal respectively, Fingleton scored 121, 53, 99 and seven not out. Australia won the latter match by ten wickets and the others by an innings. In the match by Natal, Fingleton and Brown both made centuries and combined in a double century stand.

After almost three years in the wilderness, Fingleton returned to the Test arena in the First Test at Durban. After making two in the first innings, he was unbeaten on 36 when Australia reached their second innings target with nine wickets in hand. During the first innings, a 140 km/h gale hit the ground, uprooting trees and forcing balls that were heading into the wind to do U-turns. He followed this with 62—the innings top-score—and 40 in the Second Test at Johannesburg. After taking a 93-run first innings lead, Australia needed a Test record of 399 in the second innings to win on a turning wicket, and after the early demise of Brown, Fingleton joined McCabe in a 177-run partnership that pushed the score to 1/194. Such was the dominance of McCabe that he scored more than 80% of the runs during this partnership. Australia needed only 125 with half the day remaining and eight wickets in hand when poor visibility ended play. McCabe had flayed the attack and reached 189 not out when the South Africans had the match called off, claiming that the fieldsmen were endangered by the batsman's vigorous hitting.

Fingleton finished the series with centuries in each of the last three Tests, all in consecutive innings; 112 at Cape Town, 108 at Johannesburg and 118 in Durban. In the Third Test, Fingleton and Brown set a new Australian Test record opening stand of 233, which laid the foundation for a total of 8/362 declared and an innings victory. It was Australia's first double-century opening stand in Test cricket, and remains a national record for the first wicket against South Africa. On a rain-affected wicket, Fingleton reached his maiden Test century in only 180 minutes before wickets began falling steadily.

Before the Fourth Test, Fingleton added 52 against Border and 110 in an innings win over Transvaal. His 108 in the Fourth Test was more than South Africa's entire second innings of 98, and scored at almost a run a minute. In the Fifth Test, the pair combined for another century stand. Each of the three matches resulted in an innings victory for Australia as the series was taken 4–0. Fingleton ended the Test series with 478 runs at 79.66. Against Natal at Durban, he made his highest first class score of 167, his second century against the provincial side for the season. He ended the tour with a total of 1192 runs at 74.50, including six centuries. Despite his rapid scoring in South Africa, Fingleton's achievements went largely unheralded at home; at the time, England and Australia were by far the strongest Test teams and media coverage of the tour was scant. There was little detail in the reports apart from the scores and Fingleton was still described as a slow scorer, something that angered him.