Tests in The West Indies and Australia
The next stages in the elevation of West Indies to Test status were that a team was sent to the Caribbean in 1929-30 by Marylebone Cricket Club to play a series of four Test matches and, the following season, a West Indian side travelled to Australia for the first Test series between those sides: Francis featured in matches in both seasons. The England side of 1929-30 was composed partly of Test-class players – a second tour of similar standing was organised by MCC to another of the new Test nations, New Zealand, at the same time, and some established Test players opted out of both of them. The West Indies' Test team for this series was selected match-by-match by the individual countries' cricket authorities, and Francis played in only one Test, the third match, played at Georgetown, British Guiana; this was the West Indies' first Test victory, and though the batting, led by George Headley with a century in each innings and by Clifford Roach with a double-century in the first innings, took credit in the Wisden report, Francis took six wickets in the match and, with Constantine taking nine, ensured the England side was bowled out twice. Francis' first-innings figures of four for 40 were the best innings figures he achieved in Test cricket.
The following winter, Francis, with Griffith and Constantine, formed a three-man fast bowling attack in the first-ever series between the West Indies and Australia, although, as in England in 1928, the team's success was limited. In three of the first four Test matches, the West Indies side was beaten by an innings, but in the fifth and final Test, all three fast bowlers contributed to a narrow victory; Francis took four wickets for 48 runs in Australia's first innings. In the series as a whole, he took 11 wickets at an average of 31.81.
Read more about this topic: George Francis (cricketer)
Famous quotes containing the words tests, west, indies and/or australia:
“Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is my duty to prevent, through the independence of Cuba, the U.S.A. from spreading over the West Indies and falling with added weight upon other lands of Our America. All I have done up to now and shall do hereafter is to that end.... I know the Monster, because I have lived in its lair—and my weapon is only the slingshot of David.”
—José Martí (1853–1895)
“It is very considerably smaller than Australia and British Somaliland put together. As things stand at present there is nothing much the Texans can do about this, and ... they are inclined to shy away from the subject in ordinary conversation, muttering defensively about the size of oranges.”
—Alex Atkinson, British humor writer. repr. In Present Laughter, ed. Alan Coren (1982)