George Tribe - Cricket Career

Cricket Career

Tribe played with great success for Victoria immediately after the Second World War, taking 86 wickets at 19.25 in just 13 games and playing in three Tests under Donald Bradman in the 1946-47 Ashes series. An all-rounder, he bowled slow left-arm orthodox and chinaman and batted doggedly as a left-hander, mostly at number six or seven, compiling 7 centuries in his first class career. Despite his prolific record in first-class cricket, he was unsuccessful during the series against England and was dropped from the national team. In the Fifth Test in Sydney Ray Lindwall took 109/9, but thought that Tribe had bowled better, but with no luck to return 153/0.

After failing to achieve further recognition in Australia, Tribe moved to the Lancashire League in 1947. He joined Milnrow in the Central Lancashire League and took 136 scalps in his first season. He followed that performance with a record 148 wickets the following year and 150 in 1950, when he moved to Rawtenstall for two seasons. Although he never toured with Australia he took 99 wickets on a Commonwealth tour of India in 1949/50. An engineer by trade, he joined a Northamptonshire based firm in 1951 and his prolific record saw Northamptonshire offer him terms for that season. He proved an immediate success and played for the county for nine seasons, achieving "the double" of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in seven of those seasons. His value to Northamptonshire as the county moved from being the perpetual back-markers to challenge seriously for the County Championship was immense. He was awarded his benefit in 1956.

As of 2007, Tribe still holds the Northamptonshire record for best bowling in a first-class match, returning figures of 15-31 (made up of 7-22 and 8-9) against Yorkshire in 1958. He took a record 175 wickets for the county in 1955.

He was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1955. At the time of his death he was the second oldest Australian Test cricketer and the eleventh oldest overall.

Read more about this topic:  George Tribe

Famous quotes containing the words cricket and/or career:

    The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.
    Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)

    What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.
    Arlie Hochschild (20th century)