Master of the spin-swerve
The first Monty to be a crowd favourite, M.A. Noble was the most complete player of the late 1800s and early 1900s
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Noble's Test debut came in Melbourne in 1897-98 and by the end of his second game he had 15 wickets. His batting came along too and he held the record for the best average in an Australian season four times, a mark that was ultimately beaten by Don Bradman. Hove was a favourite ground and he posted double centuries there on two trips to England, including 284 against Sussex in 1902, when he combined with Warwick Armstrong for 428, which was then a world record for the sixth wicket. Made captain for the Ashes of 1903-04, he lost 3-2, but won the 1907-08 campaign 4-1 and the 1909 series 2-1. In 1909 he became the first captain to send England in at Lord's and won all five tosses during the summer. A stand was later named after him at the SCG.
Picking up a new grip from baseball, he was able to apply swerve to trick the batsmen. "Instead of pressing two or three fingers on the ball's seam, like a spinner, Noble held it between his thumb and his strong corn-studded forefinger," Robinson wrote. "On the truest of tracks all he needed was some sort of headwind for this spin-swerve to be difficult."
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It should probably be finest hours. Scoring 60 not out at Manchester in 1899, he then opened the batting as Australia followed-on, crawling to 89. "He withstood the England bowling for eight and a half hours," Wisden said. "Noble did not get a run during three-quarters of an hour in his second innings, which lasted five hours twenty minutes, his prolonged effort contributing largely towards Australia avoiding defeat." He later apologised for his slow play.
He got a pair at Leeds in 1899 and was part of a J.T. Hearne hat-trick in the second innings, walking off the wrong way. "It was the only time team-mates saw his self-control fail," Robinson wrote. He was presented with a small silver duck and kept it in his pocket during the next match, which was his successful one at Old Trafford.
Robinson, the great Australian cricket writer, said Noble was "the most accomplished cricketer Australia produced as bowler, batsman, captain and fieldsmen, at least in the pre-1954 era of all-weather wickets". Wisden's obituary said Noble's figures proved there had not been a superior all-round Test player.
He ended his career in banking when picked on the 1899 tour of England and began to study dentistry. Working as a dentist, he was visited by Bill Ferguson, who had arranged the trip to help him get the job of team scorer and bagman, which he did for half a century. "I bought enough gold fillings to last a lifetime," Ferguson wrote in Mr Cricket. Touring life made running a dental practice difficult - strangely, he put sugar cubes into his whisky to prevent hangovers - and he became an agent for a manufacturer and also a writer. One of his clothing ideas was to have air holes under the arms of playing shirts. In 1940 he had a heart attack when playing a social match and died a week later aged 67.
Peter English is the Australasian editor of Cricinfo