Eric Hollies
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 England (ENG) |
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| Batting style | Right-hand bat | |
| Bowling type | Legbreak googly | |
| Tests | First-class | |
| Matches | 13 | 515 |
| Runs scored | 37 | 1673 |
| Batting average | 5.28 | 5.00 |
| 100s/50s | -/- | -/- |
| Top score | 18* | 47 |
| Balls bowled | 3554 | 130625 |
| Wickets | 44 | 2323 |
| Bowling average | 30.27 | 20.94 |
| 5 wickets in innings | 5 | 182 |
| 10 wickets in match | - | 40 |
| Best bowling | 7/50 | 10/49 |
| Catches/stumpings | 2/- | 178/- |
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Test debut: 8 January 1935 |
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William Eric Hollies (born June 5, 1912 in Old Hill, Staffordshire, died April 16, 1981, Chinley, Derbyshire) was an English cricketer who is mainly remembered for taking the wicket of Donald Bradman for a duck in Bradman's final Test match innings, in which only 4 was needed for a Test average of 100.
A leg spin bowler, Hollies made his English county debut for Warwickshire in 1932 and debuted for England in 1934, after showing his skill on the generally very easy Edgbaston wickets. Hollies did not spin the ball as much as most leg-spinners but he gained in accuracy as a result, and he very frequently bowled amazingly long spells for his county, most notably 73 overs in one innings against Worcestershire in 1949. He varied his stock leg-break with a top-spinner and googly that were difficult to detect and gained him many wickets, most famously the one of Bradman in 1948.
He took over 100 wickets for Warwickshire every year between 1935 and 1957 with the exceptions of 1936 (dreadful weather that reduced his normally prodigious output of overs), 1953 (injury) and 1956 (poor form, probably due to him captaining the side). At his peak, he was one of the best bowlers in England and it is believed by many that the MCC erred in not taking him to Australia after he was the leading wicket-taker in the country for a struggling Warwickshire side in 1946. That year, on one of the relatively few hard pitches, he took, without the direct assistance of a fielder, all ten wickets in an innings against Nottinghamshire.
After a poor season in 1947, Hollies returned to form in 1948 and was the one bowler who looked threatening against the Australian batsmen. In addition to his performance in the Oval Test, he took eight for 107 against a remarkably strong batting side for his county. In 1949, he played in all four Tests but the pitches blunted his effectiveness completely (though he was always steady) and from 1951, when English bowling recovered some of its pre-World War II strength, he was never in the running for Test honours despite playing a major role in Warwickshire's County Championship success in 1951. He continued to bowl excellently right up to his last match and was finally named as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1955 after taking 100 wickets for the tenth time.
After Hollies retired from county cricket, he played for Staffordshire a few times in 1958 and continued to bowl in league cricket until the 1970s. By the time of his retirement in 1957, he had taken more wickets for Warwickshire than any other player.
Hollies was, however, remarkable for his incompetence as a batsman. His total of runs (1673) was 650 fewer than his haul of wickets, and only once (in 1954) did he reach 30 in an innings. In fact, he did not reach 20 in any innings between 1946 and 1953, and set an all-time first-class record between July 1948 and August 1950 of seventy-one consecutive innings without reaching double figures. The nearest approach was by Nobby Clark of Northamptonshire with sixty-five innings without reaching double figures between 30 July 1925 and 2 June 1927.
Nevertheless, Hollies's carefree willow-wielding endeared itself to a cricketing public often bored stiff by the apoplectically orthodox endeavours of Trevor Bailey and Slasher MacKay. "The last time I saw Eric Hollies bat at Birmingham," recalled Jack Fingleton in 1958, "he was clapped and cheered all the way to the middle at No. 11. Everybody knew there would be no pretty passes at the ball and deft deflections from Eric. They knew that if he could only survive two balls they would see something in batting unknown to any textbook."[1]
One of the stands at Edgbaston Cricket Ground is known as the Eric Hollies Stand.
[edit] References
Fingleton, Jack: Masters of Cricket: From Trumper to May (Heinemann, 1958).
[edit] Notes
- ^ Fingleton: Masters of Cricket, p. 258.
