This week in the history of Gordon Cricket – 14 August 1926 Charlie Macartney
Gordon District Cricket Club | August 14, 2024
Author: Paul Stephenson
August 14, 1926, was the first day of the 5th Ashes Test between Australia and England at the Oval in London. While many of his friends suspected as much, Gordon’s Governor General Charlie Macartney announced this would be his final Test match. Charlie had turned 40 on June 27 which was the rest day in the Second Test of the same series in which Charlie scored 133 not out in a score of 5 for 194 to draw the match.
The series was a fitting end to his Test career with Charlie topping the batting list for the tour with 1,561 runs at 53.82 and 473 runs in the Test matches at a Bradman-like average of 94.60. He also took 49 wickets on tour at 17.91. Sir Pelham ‘Plum’ Warner said after his innings of 151 in the Third Test at Leeds, ‘I have seen all of the great batsmen of the past 35 years but I say without hesitation I have never seen a greater innings than that played by Macartney today. Not even the immortal Victor Trumper could have played more finely and what higher praise could I give any batsman, Australian or English.
Charlie Macartney prior to the war in the backyard of his family home in Muttama Road
Charlie’s Test career had spanned from 1907 to 1926 scoring 2,131 runs at 41.8 and taking 45 wickets at 21.6. In his First Class career Charlie scored 15,019 runs at 45.79 with 49 centuries and 53 half centuries. While his Test and First Class career are well documented, his ability to also find time to play for Gordon and perform the way he did was also an amazing feat. In addition to his cricket, he served admirably in the First World War spending a long time on the front line and in 1918 he was awarded a Meritorious Service Medal for his contribution to the war effort.
Charlie had captained Gordon in their first match in 1905 and, in the ten years up to the start of the war, in addition to his Australia and NSW commitments, he had scored an amazing 4,423 runs and taken 288 wickets. What a joy it would have been to watch him and Victor Trumper together at Chatswood Oval. There would be no modern day comparisons to go near them in full flight. Charlie had made his Sheffield Shield debut for New South Wales in 1905-06 at the age of nineteen, topped the Sydney First Grade batting and bowling averages in 1906-07 and played his first Test against England in Sydney in December 1907. One of his opponents, noting Macartney's confidence at the wicket, dubbed him the 'Governor-General', a nickname which stayed with him his whole career.
Charlie’s career with Gordon was interrupted by his First Class career and his time in the war which spanned from 1905 to his retirement at the end of the 1933-34 season. Without these interruptions Charlie could have played in 500 matches for the club but in the end, he scored 7,984 runs at an average of 48.10 over 166 completed innings. He also took 569 wickets at 14.53. An example of a typical Macartney season was 1928/29 when at the age of 43, he scored 405 runs in 4 matches at an average of 81 in 349 minutes. This included one day at Chatswood when Charlie scored 147 as part of the Gordon innings of 8 for 554.
After examples of matches where Charlie dominated were as follows:
- He scored 178 against Cumberland and took match figures of 8 for 87 at the age of 43.
- Against Manly in 1929 -30 he scored 112 and had match figures of 9 for 56
- Figures of 9-38 in an innings against Waverley (120) in 1907-08
- Figures of 12-53 (7-29 and 5-24) against Waverley (84 and 86) in 1910-11, the Club’s first premiership winning season. Ten of his twelve wickets were either bowled or caught and bowled
- His highest score of 227 against Sydney University (7-407) in 1913-14. Charlie’s partnership with George Jordan (49*) of 203 for the 8th wicket to draw the game remains the highest for Gordon in all grades for that wicket
Charlie Macartney (on the right) going out to bat prior to scoring a century before lunch in 1926
Charlie also had an average of over 100 for the season on two occasions being early in his career in 1906 and just before the war in 1914. In the 1913 season Charlie’s first 4 innings totalled 593 runs.
When Charlie retired from grade cricket after the 1933-34 season, the Gordon Annual Report commented that ‘as a batsman he was considered to be the equal of any Australian who has visited England, and who also proved himself one of the best all-round cricketers of his day. A player such as he was, is being sadly missed today by the team at present visiting England…still holds the record for the highest individual score made by a visiting Australian in England, viz. 345 compiled in 3 hours 53 minutes against Nottingham in 1921.’
Charlies’ good friend and fellow Gordon and NSW cricketer Johnnie Moyes mentioned Charlie in his book Moyes A.G, A Century of Cricketers, Angus and Robertson, 1950 as follows:
I saw a good deal of Macartney at close quarters, for we were club-mates. His stroke play often left me gasping and his audacity – cheek would be a better word- sent shivers down my spine. He would drive a half volley and then flick the next one off the middle stump to the fine leg fence. When he cover drove, it was as though someone had wound him up with a key and suddenly released the spring. He would stand on his back foot, crash the ball between first and second slip, a stroke that R.C Robertson-Glasgow has described as being so late it was almost posthumous.
There was no challenge Macartney would not accept. One day I managed to hook a couple of in-swingers over the short Chatswood Oval boundary on to the railway lines. Macartney walked in. As he passed me he snapped from under his cap. You aren’t the only one who can do that” and then proceeded to prove his words.
While no Gordon cricket enthusiast would ever claim that Charlie was the equal of Vic Trumper or Don Bradman, but he can claim to equal both of them by scoring a century before lunch in a Test in England in 1926, a feat achieved by Trumper in 1902 and Bradman in 1930. At the time of these innings Bradman was 22, Trumper 25 and Charlie 40 years of age. As there were no Test matches between 1912 and 1920 Charlie resumed his cricket at the age of 34 and hence one could say he was ‘a late bloomer’.
Charlie and Vic were good friends and practiced and played together for Gordon from 1909 to 1914. Five seasons we are unlikely to see the like of again.
