Jack Hill (cricketer)

At the end of the 2009/2010 District Cricket season, Jack Hill still shared the St Kilda Cricket Club record for 68 wickets in a season with Harry Zachariah (1911–2009), who had played with Northcote and University (which he captained), before playing 72 games for the St Kilda club from 1940/1941 to 1943/1944, and then moving to the Richmond Cricket Club for the 1944/1945 season. Zachariah took 68 wickets for the St Kilda twice in a single season: in the 1941/1942 and 1943/1944 seasons. Across his whole career, Hill took 612 wickets at an average of 12.99.

In its October 1974 obituary, The Cricketer described his action, which can be seen at [1] and also at [2] as follows:

Hill played his last game for the St Kilda Cricket Club in the 1963/1964 District Cricket semi-final against Essendon in March 1964. St Kilda lost the match, with Hill scoring 7 runs in his only innings, and failing to take a wicket.

In November 1961, Jack Hill and John Edwards, both playing for St Kilda Cricket Club were both chasing 500 wickets in District Cricket; at that stage they had each taken 497 and 496 wickets, respectively. On the following Saturday (4 November), Hill took four wickets for 6 runs; whilst Edwards failed to take a wicket.

In 1958, the St Kilda team set a record that still stands today: in the match against Northcote, at the rain affected St Kilda Cricket Ground, on Saturday 15 November 1958, St Kilda dismissed Northcote in its first innings for just 33 runs. With such a collapse, only the two fast bowlers John Edwards (1928–2002) and Peter Hosking (1932–) were used in the first innings. Let loose in the second innings, Hill took 5/21 (including Bill Lawry, l.b.w. for 14 runs).

In 1956, whilst still in the Victorian State Squad, he was associated with a move by Lindsay Hassett to open up a Cricket coaching school, the Lindsay Hassett School of Cricket, and was expected, along with Doug Ring, Ernie McCormick, John Edwards, to provide expert coaching, under the supervision of the former Fitzroy off-spinner Joe Plant.

He was also famous for not scoring what might have been the easiest runs ever scored in a Sheffield Shield Cricket in the first innings of Victoria’s match against New South Wales, at the St Kilda Cricket Ground on Saturday, 24 December 1955:

In 1955, the entire tour of the West Indies involved 12 matches in all: five Test cricket matches, and an additional 7 matches that were played before and during the Test series; one of the additional matches, a two-day match between an Australian XI and, G.A. Headley’s XI, a team selected by the eminent West Indian cricketer G. A. Headley, that was scheduled to take place on 6 and 7 June 1955, at Jarrett Park, in Montego Bay, was abandoned when play could not commence on either day due to heavy rain.

He played a single Test match for Australia against the West Indies:the drawn Fourth Test match, at Kensington Oval, Bridgetown from 14 to 20 May 1955, in which he scored 8 runs (n.o.) and 1 run, and took 0/71 and 1/44. Of the 6 additional matches that the squad contested, he played in 5 of them.

To the relief of the many who had come to refer to the continuously overlooked Hill as “Australia’s forgotten cricketer”, the Australian selectors announced in February 1953, that they had selected him for the team to tour England for the 1953 “Coronation” Ashes series.

At the time of his 1953 Test selection, a newspaper described his action as follows:

On the way to England, Hill played with an Australian XI against a Tasmanian team, in Hobart, in March 1953. On the first day, the Australian XI were 9/505 at stumps. By the end of the second day the Tasmanian team were 2/21 in their second innings, having been forced to follow on after being all out for 202. Hill bowled eleven overs, had three maidens and took none for 24. The Tasmanian team went on to score 234 in its second innings; Hill taking 2 for 28 off 11 overs (with three maidens).

In 1953, the entire tour of England involved 34 matches in all: five Test cricket matches, and an additional 29 matches that were played before, during, and after the Test series. Of the Five Tests, he played two for Australia against England during the 1953 Ashes Series.

His first Test match appearance was in the rain affected First Test from 11 to 16 June 1953 at Trent Bridge (both he and Alan Davidson made their Australian Test debut in the same match). In a drawn match, he scored a duck and four runs; and took 3/35 and 1/26.

His second Test match appearance was the Third Test, from 9–14 July 1953 at Old Trafford. In a drawn match, he scored 8 runs (n.o.) and a duck, and took 3/97 in England’s only innings.

In a 1950 interview, the Prahran Cricket Club Captain, Ivan Porter, said that of all the bowlers that he had ever faced in his long career, that he was the most impressed with Jack Hill: “He is one of the most difficult to score runs off”.

In 1949, in a semi-finals match on 17 September 1949, in which he kicked nine goals for Belgrave, he was knocked out during the match. He thought nothing of the injury and, thinking it was just concussion, he sought no additional medical treatment. On 4 October, he collapsed at work, and was hospitalised. At the hospital, it was discovered that he had fractured his skull (the second time that he had fractured his skull in his football career). He immediately retired from football, having set the goal-kicking record of 152 goals in a single season.

He was not fit enough to resume cricket until 29 October 1949; and the consequences of this severe head injury were such that he suffered from severe headaches from time to time for the rest of his life; and, very often, he had to take special headache powders in order for him to be able to play cricket.

He played intermittently for Richmond’s Second Eighteen; and, in 1946, he was released by Richmond to the Belgrave Football Club in the Mountain District Football Association.

He played in 69 Sheffield Shield cricket matches for Victoria, from 1946 to 1956, scoring 867 runs, and taking 218 wickets. He took a wicket, bowling the South Australian batsman Tom Klose with the first ball he ever bowled for Victoria.

During the time he was in the R.A.A.F. he was stationed near Sydney and, whilst there, he played intermittently with the Mosman Cricket Club. In 1945 he transferred to the St Kilda Cricket Club.

Reporting on his October 1945 debut for St Kilda, following his 1945 transfer from Melbourne, The Argus commented:

A star half-forward with St Patrick’s College, he trained with Richmond Football Club in the 1943 pre-season, and was placed on their supplementary list at the start of the 1943 season.

He moved to Melbourne in 1941 and took up a position under the Naval Board; and he went on to see active service in the Royal Australian Air Force from 1942 to 1946.

He played District Cricket for the Melbourne Cricket Club from the beginning of the 1941/1942 season. In his first match for Melbourne, playing against the Essendon Cricket Club, he put on an exceptional performance after the break for tea:

He was already an outstanding schoolboy cricketer whilst at St Patrick’s College, where he took 118 wickets in four years, at a time when the college’s team only played four matches a year. At 15 years of age he was selected to play in the Ballarat Cricket Association’s (senior) team that competed in the Provincial Group of the March 1939 Country Week Carnival in Melbourne. He played at least one of these matches at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

John Charles Hill (25 June 1923 – 11 August 1974) was an Australian cricketer who played in three Test matches from 1953 to 1955.