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JIMMY SINCLAIR
Until the second Test between South Africa and England at Newlands in 1899, in
22 years of Test matches since the first between England and Australia in 1877,
no player from any country had scored a century and taken six wickets in an
innings in the same match.
The Newlands match started on 1 April. The English captain Lord Hawke
(who often batted at number eleven and did not bowl) won the toss and, he was
to say, ‘it did us no good’. The English were 36 for one and reached 60 without
further loss – and then collapsed ‘in a deplorable way’, according to Wisden, to
be all out for 92 soon after lunch.
The chief destroyer was the Transvaal player Jimmy Sinclair. He had almost
immediate success when he came on as second change, having Pelham Warner
caught at the wicket for 31 – which turned out to be the top score of the innings.
Sinclair then scythed through the English upper order, including the formidable
Johnny Tyldesley, and finished with six for 26 in 12 five-ball overs. England were
all out for just 92, having lost nine wickets for 32 runs.
South Africa began shakily and Sinclair came to the crease with the total at 27
for two. The innings never really recovered, but Sinclair stayed there as it reached
‘Tall and powerfully built, he liked nothing more than to hit the ball hard
or bowl as fast as he could.’
61 for five and then 126 for seven by the close of the first day. When play resumed
after a rest day, 51 runs were added for the last three wickets. When the total was
177, Sinclair was the last man out with his own score on 106. Wisden commented
that ‘he combines driving power with very strong back play. His splendid innings
was closed at last by a brilliant catch on the ropes’. Those watching were in no
doubt that Sinclair would have scored more if he had not hit out: he had been
rapidly running out of partners and only two other men got double figures. The
English players thought him ‘the best bat in South Africa’.
Lord Hawke recalled that Sinclair ‘bowled really beautifully, and followed this
up by a superb century. Not only was his hitting splendid all around the wicket,
but the cleverness with which he managed to get all the bowling when the tail
were with him was uncanny in its success. He smashed his bat in trying to hit
Trott out of the field, and then smote the next delivery miles high full-pitch into
the pond, one of the biggest strokes I have ever witnessed. He was finally out to a
huge on-drive, splendidly judged and held almost on the ropes by Tyldesley. The
batsman shook the fieldsman’s hand in frank admiration, certainly reciprocated
for a spectacular and admirable innings.’
England did much better in the second innings: 330 all out, including 112
by Tyldesley. Sinclair was again the best of the bowlers, taking three for 63 in 31
overs (nine for 89 in the match). That meant South Africa needed 246 to win and,
as Lord Hawke said, ‘this did not seem a very onerous task’.
The home side were not necessarily expected to succeed – but their failure was
dramatic: 35 all out in just 114 balls. Sinclair was dismissed in the deep yet again,
this time for only 4 runs, to an extraordinary catch at long-on. ‘Sinclair let drive
at Haigh’s third ball,’ related Lord Hawke, ‘and Milligan, leaning over the ropes,
made a magnificent one-handed catch just when everybody thought the ball was
over the ropes behind the bowler. One of the catches of a lifetime of cricket.’ So
England won by 210 runs, having been 85 behind in the first innings – ‘a truly
sensational game’.
Sinclair’s century was the first in Tests by a South African, and up until that
match, in the 58 Tests played since 1877 involving England, Australia and South
Africa, nobody had scored a hundred and taken six wickets in one innings in the
same match. This was Sinclair’s finest all-round match performance – indeed,
one of the best of all time – and it was achieved in his fifth Test.
Sinclair was not only a player who caught the imagination: he was a genuine
pioneer. It has been said of him that he did more than anyone to put South
African cricket on the map, and was one of the first men who made South African
cricket famous.
In 1899 he had already blazed a trail against Lord Hawke’s side in February, in
the previous Test in Johannesburg at what is now referred to as the Old Wanderers
ground. In South Africa’s first innings of 251, replying to England’s 145, Sinclair
was run out for 86, the top score of the innings – and also the first half-century
by a South African in Tests. In the end England won the Johannesburg Test by
32 runs. Those two 1899 matches against England, said Wisden, ‘established
Sinclair’s reputation as the best all-round man in South Africa . . . Little in the
cricket of the South African players at that time suggested the rapid development
that followed, but Sinclair met with brilliant success’.
Sinclair had played his first Test three years earlier in 1896 at the age of 20, also
against an England team led by Lord Hawke. It was only seven years earlier that
South Africa played its first Test against England at Port Elizabeth in 1889. It is easy
to forget that South Africa as a political entity did not exist then, and would not exist
until 1910. The term ‘South Africa’ was a geographic term; in both cricket and rugby
the national team pre-dated the nation, and arguably helped create a national consciousness
that would support the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.
The first Test of 1896 took place in February in Port Elizabeth. England made
185 and 226, with Sinclair taking one for 34 and three for 68. But the South
African batsmen were out of their depth: they could manage only 93 and 30, with
George Lohmann taking an amazing 15 wickets for 45 runs.
The English then travelled to the Transvaal. It is difficult to picture the city
of Johannesburg at that time. Less than a decade old in 1896, following the
discovery of gold in 1887, the young city was tense when the English team
toured. Emotions were raw between British and Boer after the Jameson Raid,
and there was concern that ‘the disturbances in the Transvaal would seriously
affect the tour, but such happily was not the case’.
According to one contemporary account of Johannesburg in early 1896, by
Horace Wilson,
. . . even then it seemed to me that for the first time in South Africa I
saw life. Cape Town, with its pathetic dullness and palpable efforts to keep
up a show of business; Kimberley, with its deadly respectability – both
paled in interest beside their younger sister, so light-hearted, reckless,
and enterprising. Before long, in spite of gloomy reflections on the evils
of gold-seeking, I fell under the fascination of what was then a wonderful
town, especially wonderful from its youth. The ever-moving crowds which
thronged the streets, every man of which appeared to be full of important
business and in a desperate hurry, reminded one of the City in London.
Smart carriages with well-dressed ladies drove rapidly past, the shops were
cunningly arranged with tempting wares, and all this bustle and traffic
was restored in little over a week. A fortnight previously a revolution was
impending and a siege was looming ahead. Business had been at a complete
standstill, the shops and houses barred and barricaded, and many of the
inhabitants were taking a hurried departure; while bitterness, discord, and
racial feeling were rampant. Now, after a few days, that cosmopolitan and
rapidly changing population appeared to have buried their differences, and
the uninitiated would never have guessed the town had passed, and was,
indeed, still passing, through troublous times.
In 1896, as in the South Africa of the future, sport helped people to forget politics,
and there was much interest in the cricket. The second Test was at the Wanderers
ground, near the city centre and alongside the railway station. England batted
first and made 482 (Tom Hayward 122, C B Fry 64), a massive score for those
times. Jimmy Sinclair opened the bowling and took a creditable four wickets for
118 in 35 overs – and then opened the batting as well and made 40, the top score
in a total of 151. But he could make only 29 in the follow-on innings of 134, and
England won by 197 runs. They also won the third Test in Cape Town by an
innings; Sinclair made 30 in the match and failed to take a wicket.
In those days, long before broadcasting, Sinclair did much to popularise the
game in South Africa in the last years of the 19th century, partly because of his
big hitting, and partly because he showed that local players could occasionally
compete on equal terms with the best from England. In an era when there were
few international fixtures, his appearances in the Currie Cup for Transvaal and
in club cricket were eagerly followed. In February 1897, he scored 301 not out in
a club game for Villagers against Roodepoort, an innings which stood for many
years as a record in all cricket in South Africa.
According to legend, Jimmy Sinclair hit the longest six in history – into a railway truck
adjoining the Old Wanderers stadium, and the ball was found at the train’s destination
in the Cape. He was an explosive hitter and recorded one of the fastest centuries in
Test history.
After the three Tests of the 1899 series in which Sinclair was so successful, a tour
of England was intended, but had to be cancelled because of the outbreak of the
Anglo-Boer War. Sinclair volunteered for service on the British side, and the
story goes that the quartermaster of his regiment, Little’s Scouts, then stationed
in the Karoo, was unable to find a uniform big enough to fit Sinclair ‘in the whole
of Sterkstroom or Naauwpoort’. A Who’s Who edition of the early 20th century
reported that Sinclair ‘was taken prisoner by the Boers, escaped and arrived back
at the lines dishevelled but ready for the 1901 tour of England’.
This tour took place, even though the war continued longer than expected (Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle attacked the visitors for sailing to play cricket in England
when, he wrote, they should have been fighting the Boers in South Africa). There
were no Tests among the fixtures, but the South Africans played 25 matches.
Sinclair averaged 19 with the bat (742 runs) but the English conditions suited
his bowling and he took 101 wickets. He took 13 for 153 against Surrey, 11 for
187 against Yorkshire and 13 for 73 against Gloucestershire. Also selected for
London County, he took eight for 32 against Derbyshire.
At the end of 1902, South Africa played against Australia for the first time. The
Australians were returning home via the Cape of Good Hope after a five-month
tour of England. Captained by Joe Darling, they must count among the strongest
sides of all time, with many players who remain legends of the game, including
Victor Trumper (who had scored 11 centuries in England), Warwick Armstrong,
Clem Hill and Monty Noble. This was the first fully representative side to visit
South Africa. Because they were merely interrupting their journey back to
Australia, they played just six matches, and so the schedule has a curiously
modern look: three Test matches were squeezed into a month, two of them in
successive weeks in Johannesburg. According to Wisden, ‘their visit aroused great
interest and they were received with enthusiasm by the South African players’.
None performed better than Sinclair. In the first Test at the Wanderers in
early October 1902, it was said, ‘the Australians were at a disadvantage as they
had had to journey on at once to Johannesburg from Cape Town, and play with
little or no preliminary practice. Under the circumstances it was not surprising
that their bowling suffered.’
Batting first, South Africa made 454, with 90s by L J Tancred and C B
Llewellyn, 72 by Dave Nourse and 44 from Sinclair, who then took four for 129
in Australia’s first innings of 296. Australia were asked to follow on and made 372
for seven declared (Clem Hill scored 142 to add to his 76 in the first innings); this
time Sinclair was more expensive, taking one for 115. The match was drawn with
South Africa on 101 for four, chasing 215.
The second Test was played a week later at the same ground. The Australians
batted first this time and struggled to 175 all out. In South Africa’s reply, Sinclair
became the first man to make a century for South Africa against Australia. He
top-scored with 101 runs, including two sixes, made in only two hours. Mainly
because of Sinclair, his team’s total of 240 was scored at 4.5 runs per over. The
Australian batsmen struggled again in the second innings, with the exception of
Warwick Armstrong who carried his bat for 159 runs of a total of 309. Sinclair
took three for 118, but the best South African bowler was C B Llewellyn, who
took 10 for 116 in the match.
South Africa needed 245 to win and had high hopes, having made almost
that total in the first innings. But they crashed to 85 all out, Sinclair top-scoring
with 18, and lost by 159 runs. The short tour then moved back to Cape Town for
the third Test in early November. South Africa again scored only 85 (Sinclair 0)
in their first innings in reply to Australia’s 252 (Llewellyn again featured with
six for 97).
It was in the second innings at Newlands that Sinclair produced perhaps his
greatest knock: 104, including no fewer than six sixes. Test cricket had rarely
seen hitting to match this. Wisden described it as ‘a superb innings, and he might
perhaps have made more runs if he had not become somewhat reckless after
completing his hundred’. Sinclair’s century, which took just 80 minutes, was then
the second fastest in Test history, after Englishman Gilbert Jessop’s 77-minute
hundred against the same Australian team earlier in 1902. Sinclair’s remains the
fourth fastest of all time in terms of minutes (the number of balls he faced was
not recorded – though it has been estimated that he faced 79 balls for his 104).
Sinclair’s career lasted another nine years, but he never again approached the
dazzling performances of 1899 and 1902. By the end of the Australian series he
had scored 589 in eight Tests, including three centuries and a fifty, for an average
of 36.81 – nobody else in the South African team at that stage had an average
above 30. His bowling average was 30.80 from 26 wickets, with one instance of
five wickets in an innings (six for 26 against England in 1899).
The next tour that included Test matches was the English visit to South Africa
in 1905/1906. The first Test in Johannesburg was tremendously exciting. South
Africa made just 91 in the first innings (Sinclair 0) but won the match by one
wicket – their first Test victory. Chasing 284 for victory, they were 105 for six and
then 226 for eight. When last man Percy Sherwell joined Dave Nourse 45 runs
were still needed – and they got them.
In the second Test which started on 6 March, also at the Wanderers, Sinclair
was back to his all-round best. He took three for 35 in 25 overs in England’s 148
in their first innings, and then hit a six and seven fours in a ‘brilliant’ 66, the
top score in South Africa’s 277. Then he took another two wickets (for 36) as
England made 160 and South Africa knocked off the 33 runs needed for victory
with the loss of one wicket. ‘It was a pity that the last four Test matches should
have been crowded into the last month of the tour,’ complained Wisden. ‘When
March came the Englishmen were not so fresh as they had been, some of them
having found the heat and dust rather trying. At any rate, in this second match
the team cut a sorry figure.’
Sinclair scored 28 (of a South African total of 385) and 48 (349 for five
declared) in the third Test a week later, again in Johannesburg. ‘Not for a
moment did England look like winning,’ and South Africa took the match by
243 runs, their biggest Test win to date – and as ‘the victory gave South Africa
the rubber, the result naturally aroused great enthusiasm.’ The English captain,
Pelham Warner, said afterwards that the South Africa batting ‘was thoroughly
good and sound right down to the last man, and their fielding was splendid and
their bowling excellent, with great variety’.
Warner stated that ‘the MCC fully intends to make a supreme effort to win
the next match’ – and indeed England came back to win the fourth Test in Cape
Town by four wickets, but then lost the fifth Test (also at Newlands) by an innings
and 16 runs. Sinclair scored just 13 runs in three innings in these two matches,
but his bowling figures were among his best: four for 41 in 27 overs; three for 67;
four for 45; and one for 20: 12 wickets at 14.41. He had helped South Africa win
three Tests in four weeks and take the series 4-1.
However, Warner’s was a weaker English side than those who came to South
Africa before and after. In 1907, a much more powerful team was selected for
the three Test matches against South Africa in England. Names like C B Fry,
Tom Hayward, Johnny Tyldesley, Len Braund, George Hirst, Gilbert Jessop and
Colin Blythe have resonated down the decades as representative of a golden age
in English cricket.
Sinclair did little in the first match at Lord’s, which was drawn because of
rain. Of the second Test in Leeds, Wisden commented that
. . . a less satisfactory game has seldom been played. The wicket was soft
before the start, and on the second day especially cricket had to be carried on
with extreme difficulty between the showers. On the whole the Englishmen
had no great reason to congratulate themselves on their victory.
The main reason for this surly assessment was England’s ‘dismal collapse’ in their
first innings, nine wickets going down after lunch in less than 75 minutes for an
addition of 42 runs. England crashed out for 76, with six wickets going to Aubrey
Faulkner and three to Sinclair.
South Africa could manage only 110 in reply (Sinclair 2). England followed
that with 162 (‘the South African bowlers were much handicapped by having
to use a wet ball, but they triumphed over this disadvantage in a remarkable
way, not only keeping their length surprisingly well but getting on a lot of spin’)
to set a winning target of 129. Even in a low-scoring match, this did not seem
out of reach, but South Africa lost two wickets for 10 before yet another rain
interruption. After resuming they were soon 18 for five. Hopes were raised when
Sinclair hit Blythe for a dozen runs in one over, but when he was on 15 he was
caught at slip; South Africa were all out for 75 and lost the game by 53 runs. The
third Test was drawn, with South Africa still needing 97 runs to win with five
wickets in hand. They lost the series 1-0.
It was Sinclair’s last visit to England. Wisden commented: ‘This time he was
not wanted much as a bowler, being quite overshadowed by Schwarz, Vogler,
Faulkner, and Gordon White. In batting, too, he had quite a modest record, but
on occasions his hitting was tremendous, notably in a remarkable match against
Sussex at Brighton. The South Africans won by 39 runs after starting the game
with a paltry score of 49. In their second innings they made 327, Sinclair hitting
up 92 out of 135 in an hour and forty minutes.’
After the 1907 tour South Africa did not play another Test for three years.
Jimmy Sinclair was a great all-rounder in more ways than one: he played a match for the
South African national rugby team (before they were called Springboks) against the 1903
British Lions. He was described as ‘an outstanding player’ who could take any position in
the scrum.
After 1902 Sinclair played 17 Tests – two-thirds of his career total – but could score
only 480 runs in those matches, at an average of 16.00. Only twice in 31 innings
did he pass 50, and five times he recorded a duck. This pulled his career batting
average down to 23.23. In short, he became a bowler rather than an all-rounder.
By contrast with his batting, Sinclair’s bowling figures after 1902 until his last
Test in 1911 were almost consistent with his earlier career. In 17 Tests in those
nine years, he took 37 wickets at 32.29 (though he took them less often, in terms
of balls bowled, than he had up to 1902).
In nine matches in his last two Test series – against England in South Africa
in 1909/1910, and on South Africa’s first tour of Australia in 1910/1911 – he took
only 12 wickets and scored just 253 runs. His batting average for those two series
was 14.88, typical of a tail-ender rather than an all-rounder.
Sinclair’s waning abilities flared briefly, though, in the second Test in
Melbourne in December 1910. In South Africa’s massive first innings of 506,
he made 58 not out in just 69 balls, including two sixes (the only other six hit in
the match was by Victor Trumper). The top scorer was Aubrey Faulkner with a
superb 204, the first double-century by a South African in Tests. Faulkner had
first come into the side as a bowler, and was now confirmed as a batsman of the
highest class. In retrospect, it is as if the baton of all-rounder in the South African
side was finally being passed from Sinclair to Faulkner at Melbourne.
Sinclair’s place among the great all-rounders does not rest on his career
statistics, but on a selection of great performances that were unprecedented and
inspiring to a young and fragile cricket country. In his ability to turn a game
with bat or ball, and to establish individual records, he can be seen as the Mike
Procter or Lance Klusener of his time. Like them, whether he succeeded or not,
he created excitement on and off the field – and bear in mind that Sinclair was
the pioneer, going confidently forward to places where South African cricket
had never been. His Test career strike-rate has been estimated by the statistician
Charles Davis as 71-72 runs per 100 balls, one of the highest of all time.
It is fitting that he is believed to have hit the longest six in history. One of
the balls that he slogged out of the Old Wanderers (it is not known in which
match) landed in a coal truck in the adjoining railway yard, and was found 1600
kilometres away in Cape Town.
This larger-than-life sportsman did not only excel at cricket. He played in one
soccer international, and was selected for the South African national rugby team
(not yet known as the Springboks) in the first Test of the 1903 series against the
touring British Lions. Springbok legend Danie Craven wrote that Sinclair was
regarded by Craven’s mentor, Oubaas Markotter, as ‘an outstanding player. He
played in the era when there was no specialisation amongst the forwards and he
could play in any position in the scrum, and brilliantly too.’ Rugby historian Chris
Greyvenstein wrote that Sinclair ‘certainly made his mark when he dribbled the
ball for a full 40 yards through a maze of defenders’.
In 1913, nearly two years after his last Test match in March 1911 – playing by
then for a South Africa that was a real country, not merely a geographical term
or a sporting concept – Jimmy Sinclair, the first great South African all-rounder,
died in Yeoville in Johannesburg, aged 36. His brother Donald, who also played
cricket for Transvaal, was killed in action in France in 1916, aged 38.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Jimmy Sinclair
Born 16 October 1876
International Career: 1896-1911
| M | Runs | Avg | 100 | 50 |
Ct
|
Wkts | Avg | RpO | 5I | 10M | |
| Tests | 25 | 1069 | 23.23 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 63 | 31.68 | 3.32 | 1 | 0 |
| First-class | 130 | 4483 | 21.55 | 6 | 21 | 66 | 492 | 21.40 | 3.23 | 33 | 10 |
