Jack Siedle - Return To Test Cricket

Return To Test Cricket

Siedle was very much the form player in the first weeks of the South African tour of England in 1935. In May, he made centuries in three consecutive first-class matches, against Surrey, Oxford University and the MCC. In the Surrey game, Siedle was somewhat overshadowed by Dudley Nourse, who hit a century in each innings, but his unbeaten 104 in the second innings and an unbroken partnership of 160 with Nourse set up the declaration from which the South Africans achieved a decisive victory. Nourse was prominent with a first-innings century in the Oxford match as well, but in the second South African innings Siedle shared an opening stand of 164 with Herby Wade and then an unbroken partnership of 205 with Eric Rowan as a high-scoring match petered out to a draw: Siedle's 164 not out was his highest score of the tour. The match against MCC at Lord's was ruined as a contest by rain on the second and third days, but on the first day Siedle had carried his bat for 132 in the South Africans' innings of 297. Wisden reported that "chief honours" in the match went to Siedle and that his innings was "a great feat in view of the previous poor scoring at headquarters". It went on: "Siedle, who batted for nearly five hours without giving anything approaching a chance, never took the slightest risk, but some of his off-side strokes and the square and late cuts were perfectly executed." Siedle did not keep up this rate of scoring and the three centuries in May were his only centuries of the tour, but he continued to make runs through June and was the first member of the touring team to reach 1,000 runs in the season.

In the first Test at Nottingham, he top-scored in South Africa's first innings with 59, though he was quickly out for 2 when South Africa were forced to follow on; the first innings was played on a pitch made awkward by weekend rain and Wisden wrote that he played "with commendable skill and steadiness for about three hours" and "afforded emphatic proof of his strength in defence". But Siedle then had a poor match in the second game of the series, which took place at Lord's and which the South Africans won by 157 runs, their first victory in England ever and, as the only decisive result in the whole series, a series-winning victory; Siedle's contributions were 6 and 13. There were better scores of 33 and 21 in the third Test, which was drawn, but Siedle strained a knee in the match. The knee injury kept him away from cricket for three weeks and that included missing the fourth Test, but he was recovered in time for the final game of the series where he made innings of 35 and 36 in a high-scoring draw that confirmed the series win for South Africa. Injured again, he did not then play in any further first-class fixtures on the tour. His record in the Test series of 205 runs and a batting average of 25.62 put him well down the list of the South African batsmen: sixth in terms of aggregate and eighth in terms of average; on the tour as a whole, however, he made 1346 runs at an average of 39.58.

The South African cricket season immediately following the England tour included a series of five Tests against the Australians, and although the series was won rather easily by Australia and there were many changes in the South African team, Siedle maintained his place in the Test side throughout the season. In the first match, he made 31 and 59, in both innings scoring much faster than his opening partner, Bruce Mitchell, but the match was lost by nine wickets. Innings of 22 and 34 followed in the next game which was drawn, largely through a huge score of 231 by Dudley Nourse. The third Test was a very heavy defeat for the South Africans and Siedle, with scores of 1 and 59, was the top-scorer for this side in the match. The following match was an even heavier defeat and a four-day match was over inside two days: Siedle again top-scored, making 44 in the first innings but 0 in the second. The batting overall was better in the fifth and final match of the series, though the result was still an innings defeat: Siedle scored 36 and 46 in this match; in contrast to his style earlier in the series, and in the second innings of this match, Siedle's first innings took more than two-and-a-half hours and his 36 was scored out of a total of 124. In the series as a whole, Siedle scored 332 runs at an average of 33.20 and was second only to Nourse both in aggregate and average.

Siedle played only one further season of first-class cricket for Transvaal after this and had retired by the time of the next Test series played by the South African team. In the 1936-37 season, his last, he signed off with a score of 207 in his final first-class innings for Natal in the match against Western Province.