Full Name

Robert John Inverarity

Born

January 31, 1944, Subiaco, Perth, Western Australia

Age

80y 48d

Batting Style

Right hand Bat

Bowling Style

Slow Left arm Orthodox

RELATIONS

(father)

Other

Coach

Almost throughout his long career John Inverarity was a good batsman, but a great captain and theorist, and Australian Test history might be significantly different if Inverarity had been entrusted with the national captaincy during the World Series Cricket schism. Instead the armband passed from 40-year-old Bob Simpson to the rookie Graham Yallop. Mike Brearley's England slaughtered Yallop's lambs 5-1, and many international careers were ended before they should have begun. Yallop himself, a potentially great batsman, never quite recovered. Meanwhile Inverarity, instead of locking intellectual horns with Brearley, was quietly racking up runs and trophies for Western Australia - in five years as captain he won the Sheffield Shield four times. When schoolteaching took him from Perth to Adelaide he just kept on playing, being seen as something of a freak in Australian first-class cricket as he continued, grey-haired and ghostly, into his forties. South Australia duly won the Shield in 1981-82, with Inverarity contributing 348 runs and 30 wickets. By the time he finally retired, in 1985, he had crept past Don Bradman's Shield-record run-aggregate. A brief Test career was long over by then - six matches, the first in 1968 as an opening batsman (he was the last man winkled out by Derek Underwood in that year's Oval epic), and the last in 1972, by which time his slow left-arm bowling was being increasingly used. A couple of inspirational stints as Kent's coach briefly interrupted his career as a headmaster, and he resumed his coaching with Warwickshire in 2004. Inverarity's father was a first-class cricketer too, and his daughter Alison was an Olympic high-jumper.

In 2011, Inverarity was appointed as Cricket Australia's full-time national selector, following the Australian Team Performance Review that was implemented in the aftermath of that year's Ashes debacle.
Steven Lynch

John Inverarity Career Stats

Batting & Fielding

FormatMatInnsNORunsHSAve100s50s4s6sCtSt
Tests61111745617.400120040
FC223377491177718735.902660--2510
List A302876869032.6605--200

Bowling

FormatMatInnsBallsRunsWktsBBIBBMAveEconSR4w5w10w
Tests653729343/263/2623.251.5093.0000
FC223-1684067802217/86-30.672.4176.1-70
List A30-615387153/193/1925.803.7741.0000
John Inverarity portrait

Explore Statsguru Analysis

Test

Debut/Last Matches of John Inverarity

FC Matches

Span
1962/63 - 1984/85

List A Matches

Span
1969/70 - 1984/85

Recent Matches of John Inverarity

MatchBatBowlDateGroundFormat
South Aust vs Queensland55 & 47/86 & 2/5001-Mar-1985AdelaideFC
South Aust vs West Aust9 & 172/56 & 2/7522-Feb-1985AdelaideFC
South Aust vs Victoria132/22 & 4/6317-Jan-1985AdelaideFC
South Aust vs West Aust69 & 02/8310-Jan-1985PerthFC
South Aust vs Tasmania02/21 & 2/2920-Dec-1984HobartFC

Photos of John Inverarity

10 minutes to training: Darren Lehmann signals to the team
John Inverarity and Darren Lehmann at an Australia training session
Michael Clarke and John Inverarity at the Ashes squad announcement
Michael Clarke and John Inverarity at Australia's final net session
Brad Haddin chats to selector John Inverarity
John Inverarity and Ed Cowan chat at practice