Cricket Career
Trott's story represents one of the great enigmas of Australian cricket history. He burst onto the Test scene against England in Adelaide, Australia in 1894-95, with an amazing debut which included taking 8 for 43 with his slinging, round-arm bowling and scoring 38 and 72 (both not out) with the bat. He followed this up in the next match in Sydney, Australia, by scoring 85 (again not out), though he was strangely not asked to bowl by captain George Giffen. Albert's brother, Harry Trott, was named captain of the Australian team which toured England in 1896, though Albert's form (which saw him average 102.5 with the bat in the Test series against England) was, remarkably, insufficient to merit tour selection.
Despite his omission from the team, Trott sailed to England independently and, with the help of the Australian cricketer and Test umpire Jim Phillips, played for Middlesex. Trott's penchant for the spectacular did not fail him: he became the first (and to this day the only) batsman to hit a ball over the current Lord's Pavilion, bludgeoning Monty Noble out of the ground on 31 July 1899. The ball landed in the garden of Philip Need's home, the Lord's dressing room attendant. At the time, Trott had been playing for the MCC and Ground against the Australians. He was widely acknowledged as the finest all-round cricketer of his day. A true student of the game, Trott's bowling relied less on pace than it did on guile and spin; he rarely bowled two balls alike. Trott was a dynamo in the field, with the ball seldom escaping his commodious clutch. He regularly turned matches for Middlesex with his powerful hitting.
However, from 1901 or 1902, Trott declined abruptly because, owing to a rapid increase in his weight and loss of mobility, he could not bowl the very fast ball that was so deadly in his early years. His haul of wickets fell rapidly: from 176 in 1901 to 133 in 1902 and 105 in 1903. By 1905, he was extremely expensive and ineffective (taking only 62 wickets), and only in the very dry summer of 1906 did his batting reach the levels of his early years with Middlesex.
Trott's ability to entertain never left him. His popularity rose as he enjoyed regular ales with spectators on the boundary while fielding. In his benefit match in 1907, he took an amazing double hat trick (four wickets in four balls), and then followed up with a second hat trick later in the innings (the feat of two hat-tricks in an innings has been repeated only once in first-class cricket, by Joginder Rao). However, the early end to the match meant that it did not raise as much money for him as it might have done, and he is said to have remarked that he had "bowled himself into the poorhouse".
Read more about this topic: Albert Trott
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