John Marshall

A champion of the Hobart Town Cricket Club for twenty years, John Marshall played his final first-class match for Tasmania at the age of fifty-eight, making him Australia's oldest ever first-class cricketer. In 1850-51, he also had the honour of captaining and wicketkeeping for Tasmania in the inaugural first-class match in Australia, which, incidentally, Tasmania won. Until the time of his final first-class game three years later in the third inter-colonial match against Victoria, the cricketing career of Marshall remained a highly decorated one. When he played, he wore a beard that he had not cut since his teen years. (Thomas Rose, June 2000)