WWI and Western Suburbs Cricket from 1915-1918
Western Suburbs District Cricket Club Sydney | June 30, 2025
The following article is an extract from our 2006 publication “Cricket in Black and White: 110 Not Out: The history of the Western Suburbs District Cricket Club”.
Only eight days after Wests had claimed the 1914-15 title, Australian forces landed at Gallipoli, bringing home the seriousness of the war. As casualty lists mounted, competitive cricket seemed more and more like an inappropriately frivolous pastime, and cricketers risked facing allegations of "shirking". Increasing numbers of Wests cricketers signed up, and their names began to appear on the casualty lists: John Blacklock, a keen member of the club's City & Suburban team, fell in the vicious fighting at Lone Pine, aged only 21.
There was no opportunity for Wests to defend its title in 1915-16. The Association decided that while it would continue to schedule grade matches, no premiership would be awarded. The Central Cumberland club went further, withdrawing from cricket for the duration of the war. Saturday afternoon games continued as a means of boosting the morale of the players and spectators, which created an unusual atmosphere. The games lacked their usual competitive intensity, and the batsmen focussed their efforts on scoring as rapidly as possible, without too much regard for safety. The over was lengthened to eight balls, to reduce the number of maidens.
This form of the game found an ideal practitioner in Wally Dight. The second of eight siblings from Tamworth, Dight settled in Strathfield and found work as a draftsman. His career with Western Suburbs is, from this distance, inexplicable. He turned out for Burwood in 1895-96, the club's first season, as a batsman in Seconds, often alongside his brother Arthur. He was moderately successful, but did not play again until 1906-07, by which time his batting was less useful, but his leg spin bowling had developed well enough to win him 54 wickets. Presumably encouraged by his improvement, he took another break from the game, but this time only for eight years. By 1915 he was 45 years of age and had never played a First Grade game. Clumsy in the field and now terrible with the bat, Dight bowled slow, very slow, leg breaks. Loading the ball with spin, he tossed it high into the air and challenged the batsmen to hit it as far as they could. When the batsmen spotted his traps, he could be awfully expensive, but when they did not, he collected wickets by the bagful. Sometimes both things happened at once: in 1917- 18, he bowled throughout Waverley's innings of 362 to take nine for 171, a haul that included the prized wickets of internationals Syd Gregory, Alan Kippax and Hanson Carter. Against North Sydney in 1915-16, he bowled 18 eight-ball overs - 144 deliveries - to take five for 143. While he was punished often, it was rare for Dight to go without wickets, and some of his returns were spectacular: 13- 110 against Middle Harbour in 1916-17, for example, and 12-132 against Glebe. In the three seasons from 1915-16, he took 151 wickets at an average of 17.54, and he was still tricking out First Grade batsmen in 1923, when he was 53 years old.
Another slow bowler made his debut in First Grade the season after Dight's first appearance. Wally Brown bowled in three First Grade innings in 1916-17 and captured only a single wicket. Three seasons later, at the age of thirty, he made his final appearance in the top grade and added two more victims, so that his career record in Firsts was unremarkable: three wickets for 57 runs. In Seconds, however, he was a phenomenon. Against North Sydney in 1917-18, his figures stood at 0-29 at the end of the first day's play; but, with a spell of 9-20 on the second afternoon, he became the first bowler to claim nine wickets in a Second Grade innings for Burwood. He repeated this performance, even more emphatically, in 1919- 20, when he grabbed 9-19 in a lethal spell against University. In 1918-19, he collected 71 wickets in the Second Grade season. In time, he dropped down to Third Grade, where he was no less destructive, repeating his best analysis of 9-19 against Gordon in 1922-23. In all, Wally Brown gathered 575 wickets for the club.
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Brown's 9-19 was not quite the most spectacular spell produced by a Western Suburbs bowler during the War. In Third Grade's match against Balmain in 1917-18, a bowler named G Benson took five wickets with five consecutive deliveries. Lower grade matches were thinly reported during the War and we know nothing else at all about Benson's feat: not the scores of the game, how Benson bowled, or even his first name. What we do know is that his phenomenal spell was a complete aberration; Benson played four seasons with the club, never rising above Third Grade, and taking 5 wickets at an average of 33. He seems to have been a rather ordinary cricketer, who enjoyed one utterly extraordinary moment.
When the Central Cumberland club withdrew from Grade cricket, "Gar" Waddy, a former New South Wales batsman, decided to continue in the game with Wests. Waddy's presence helped to compensate for the loss of Bert Pratten and Austin Diamond, who had volunteered for the forces. He played only two innings for the Club in 1915-16, but in the following season he stroked 570 runs. He was inconsistent, but when he found his touch he was masterful, like the day when he smashed 193 against Middle Harbour, sharing a third wicket stand of 247 with Joe Taylor (109). Wests needed only 243 deliveries to run up a total of 369, and Bil Finneran, the old Burwood leg- spinner, was mauled for 98 runs in only four overs.
Joe Taylor's batting flourished in these seasons, and his game was well-suited to their free-scoring tempo. In 1915-16 alone he hit four centuries, and the following season he matched Waddy with 599 runs. His best effort was an unbeaten 126 against a strong Sydney attack led by Clarrie Grimmett. Taylor was pressed into service as a bowler at times, since apart from Dight, the side's bowling was often toothless. Even Ward Prentice put aside his gloves, and sent down very presentable medium-pacers. Prentice, versatile and adaptable, learned quickly enough to collect 40 First Grade wickets in 1915-16, when he also made 534 runs. Wests lost nothing behind the stumps, where Cecil McKew was neat and agile. Prentice was actually the best of the club's quicker bowlers until Barney Russell arrived from Glebe, a rawboned opening bowler who could also hit the ball cleanly in the lower order.
By the end of the war, forty of the club's past or present players had enlisted for active service. Many never returned. Gilbert Johns, a highly consistent Second Grade batsman, was killed in France, a few weeks before the death of Edwin Clarke, an enthusiastic lower-grade all rounder. Two Second Grade players, Charles Farry and Fred Rothwell, died during the terrible fighting at Ypres in October 1917.
Nor did all of the survivors escape unscathed. Bert Pratten enlisted in December 1916, and was committed to action in France in November 1917: but within two months he was in hospital, suffering from "trench fever", an unpleasant, lice-borne disease with symptoms similar to typhoid. He was so unwell that he was discharged from the Army as medically unfit, and he returned to Australia. Cyril Docker also served on the Western Front, with the 18th AlF. He was fortunate to survive the brutal campaign of June 1916, during which he was mentioned in despatches for leading a group of soldiers who seized a German trench. But within a couple of months, he was evacuated from the front near Pozieres, his nerves shattered by shell shock. In hospital in England, his symptoms were described as "nervous prostration and insomnia" - confined to bed, in other words, but unable to sleep. At least the War ended well for Docker; in 1919 he was awarded the OBE for "valuable services rendered in connection with the war", and he was selected as a member of the AlF cricket team that toured England, South Africa and Australia at the end of the War. 23 of his 24 first-class matches were played for the AlF; he scored fifty at Cambridge University, took five for 20 in Johannesburg, and then returned to his life as a banker - but he never played again for Western Suburbs.
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