Thread:
"Arthur Mailey (born 3 Jan 1886) had something of Huckleberry Finn about him, stopping along the high roads of adventure quite often to exchange laughter and lend a helping hand." - RC Robertson Glasgow
#cricket #onthisday

Mailey was a remarkable leg-spinner.. He turned the ball – by huge degrees, much more than his contemporaries, more than most of his successors. He tossed it up as an experiment in the science of spin, with disdain for the probable hits for boundaries and beyond.

“It is for the medium pacers to keep the runs down, I am here to take wickets.” He possessed a googly that troubled, among others, Victor Trumper, Jack Hobbs and Don Bradman.
And yet, he approached his task with accuracy sacrificed in pursuit of turn and flight.

His famed words echoed in his actions on the field: “I’d rather spin and see a ball hit for four, than bowl a batsman with a straight one.” He added, “If I bowl a maiden over, it’s not my fault but the batsman’s.”

He rose from poverty, from his cubbyhole of a room in a wooden shack in the slums. (only artefact of note was a photograph of Victor Trumper jumping out to drive) At the age of 13 left school to become a trouser presser, a glass blower and later a Water Board labourer.

His employment as a Water Board labourer gave him the wherewithal to buy a cricket ball. Mailey carried it all the time, bowling at anyone who was game. When he found no one, he bowled to uncomplaining walls. Supposedly a vagrant taught him the googly.

Trumper fell to a googly: “There was no triumph in me as I watched the receding figure. I felt like a boy who had killed a dove.” This had for long been relegated to apocrypha. But recently discovered scorebooks reveal that there was such a game & Trumper was stumped off Mailey.

Mailey at last made his Test debut in 1920-21 Ashes
In the fourth Test, he took 4 wickets in the first innings and 9 in the second.
Being Mailey, he could laugh in retrospect at the chance off Patsy Hendren that went down that day. But for the miss, he could have had all ten.

When chances were missed, he said “Never mind, I am expecting a wicket any day now”
Once Victoria scored 1107, he got 4/ 362 and said: “The figures would've been a lot better had three sitters not been dropped off my bowling, two by a man in the pavilion wearing a bowler hat.”

On a not too successful tour of England in 1921, he ended with figures of 28-4-66-10 against Gloucestershire. That ensured that his autobiography would be titled 10 for 66 and All That.

The 1921 Tests were not successful, but his cartoons impressed the London Bystander and Graphic and they employed him for the considerable sum of £20 a week. He started writing for the papers as well and could at last bid adieu to his life as a labourer.

He played for Australia till 1926, with less success … The end was hastened when NSWCA ruled that he could not continue to write about the game while playing. Mailey opted for the money in journalism. He earned substantial amounts from Sydney Sun and Sydney Daily Telegraph.

In his 21 Tests he ended with 99 wickets at 33.91.
In his remaining days in first-class cricket Mailey had the rare honour of dismissing Bradman twice in the same match. However, he did suffer a lot at the hands of the great man in their final meetings.

Most of Mailey’s writing, cartoons, opinions, were self-deprecating, often side-splitting. Hugely popular, he enjoyed being the butt of jokes.
Many were regaled by his own tales of his poor bowling, when he was barracked, “Oh for a strong arm and a walking stick.”

In 1926 he held an exhibition of his paintings during the England tour. Visiting the event, Queen Mary commented that his work was excellent but the sun was not convincing. Mailey quipped, “But Your Majesty, in this country I have to paint the sun from memory.”

He loved to tell the story of his meeting a formidable lady member of the Royal Family after a long day in the field. “I’m a little stiff from bowling,” he explained as he offered a ginger hand. “Ah,” replied the lady. “I wondered where you came from.”

He continued writing, drawing, painting and organising cricket tours all his life. His books of cartoon are now published as paperbacks and sell for £350 and more. His 10 for 66 and All That remains one of the most popular cricket biographies.

He wrote his own account of the Bodyline series as well, titled And then came Larwood. The fly leafs depict his cartoons of batsmen in the full armoury of a medieval knight. However, Mailey did not criticise the tactics used by the Englishmen.

During World War II, Mailey vigorously supported the Federal government’s austerity campaign.

And even in his later years he was a bowler at heart. When Len Hutton was knighted for his services to the game, he voiced his congratulations adding, “I hope the next one is a bowler. The last bowler to be knighted was Sir Francis Drake.”

Finally, he settled down in a Sydney Beach. He ran a mixed business at Burraneer Bay where he enjoyed writing, painting in oils, fishing and golf. His general store included butchery.
Over the counter hung a notice “I bowled tripe, I wrote tripe and now I sell tripe.”