1 week Ago By Mid-day
So William Pucovski has joined a list of Australian cricketers who ended up playing only one Test for their country. The 27-year-old Victorian announced his decision to put a full stop to his playing career due to his concussion issues, during an interaction with Sen Radio in Melbourne earlier this week.There are 11 Australians including Pucovski, whose solitary Test experience came against India (in the third match of the 2020-21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy).
Pace bowler Len Johnson was the first—in the fifth Test of the 1947-48 series vs India at Melbourne. Johnson, picked for his country after one season of domestic cricket, was among three Test debutants with Sam Loxton and Doug Ring. Despite getting six wickets in the game, the Queenslander was not on the ship to England like his fellow rookies, who became part of Don Bradman’s Invincibles in 1948.
John Rutherford and Jack Wilson made their debuts at the Brabourne Stadium on Australia’s 1956-57 tour of India and didn’t play Test cricket again. Left-arm spinner Wilson got picked for the India tour after his toil on the 1956 trip of England, where he achieved his career-best match figures of 12 for 61 against Gloucestershire. GS Ramchand was his lone wicket in his debut Test.
The Australian retired from competitive cricket the following season.Opening batsman Rutherford scored 30 before edging one to wicketkeeper Naren Tamhane off Subhash Gupte in the only innings of his Test career; the game ending in a tame draw. According to The A to Z of Australian Cricketers, published by Oxford, the Western Australian was a mathematics teacher by profession and was nicknamed Pythagoras.
A minor heart attack while leading his state against the 1960-61 West Indian tourists ended his first-class cricket career.The father-son pair of Roger and Stuart Binny as well as the late David Johnson are not the only Anglo-Indians to figure in Test cricket on these shores. There’s also Australia’s leg-spin bowler Rex Sellers, whose parents migrated to Australia.
Bulsar-born, Adelaide-based Sellers played his one and only Test against MAK Pataudi’s team at Calcutta in 1964-65. He went wicketless in the five overs his captain Bob Simpson gave him during the drawn Test at the Eden Gardens.In 1967-68 at Sydney, 20-year-old middle-order batsman Les Joslin earned his Baggy Green for the fourth and final Test against India.
Joslin succumbed to spin in both innings during an uneventful debut. The Australian selectors picked him for the 1968 Ashes tour, but he couldn’t come up with a performance that would earn him a place in the playing XI. By 1969-70 he was done with Sheffield Shield cricket for Victoria.
Another left-handed batsman—Paul Hibbert, the opener who was blooded in the opening Test of the 1977-78 series at Brisbane—was dumped for the rest of the five-match series after scores of 13 and two. A hundred for Victoria against Bishan Singh Bedi’s tourists prompted the selectors to give him a Test cap, but that was the only time he was seen in one. Many years later in 2008, Hibbert, 56, was found dead in his Melbourne home.
Fast bowler Ian Callen claimed six wickets in the fifth Test at Adelaide which decided the 1977-78 series in favour of Australia. Callen didn’t play Test cricket again although he was in Australia’s 1977-78 tour party to the West Indies. Back and knee injuries didn’t help matters for Callen, who later ventured into the bat manufacturing business.
Wayne Phillips, another Victorian one-Test player for Australia, was chosen for the fifth Test against India at Perth in 1991-92 in place of the seasoned Geoff Marsh. Phillips’ Test debut was in complete contrast to his namesake, who scored a hundred on Test debut against Pakistan at the same WACA ground in 1983-84. That Wayne Philipps, who kept wickets too, went on to play 27 Tests for Australia before becoming an integral part of the Australian Cricket Academy when it was based in Adelaide.
Australia captain Mark Taylor replaced Paul Reiffel with Paul Wilson for the Kolkata Test in the 1997-98 series against India. Wilson went wicketless in a Test that India won by an innings and 219 runs to clinch the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Incidentally both Reiffel and Wilson took to umpiring.
Adding to the list of Australia’s fast bowling Test debutants to get a solitary game was South Australia’s Peter George who claimed two wickets in his first Test—against India in Bangalore in 2010-11.Back to Pucovski. He is unique in a sense that he himself called time on his career, although there was a recommendation made by an independent medical panel to call it quits.
Pucovski’s struggles against pace bowling rendered him concussed 13 times. Probably, the saddest utterance in his Sen Radio interview was: “It had always been my dream to play for Australia. I found myself in that position in 2021.
My ambition didn’t stop there. I wanted to be that guy that was a leader of the batting unit. I wanted to play 100 Tests.
Unfortunately, one Test is where it ends.”mid-day’s group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello.
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