Jack Gregory was, in partnership with Ted McDonald, one of Australia’s most destructive fast bowlers. His Wisden obituary in 1974 celebrated an explosive talent.
Gregory, Jack Morrison died on August 7, 1973, aged 77.
Jack Morrison Gregory, of a famous Australian cricket family, had a comparatively brief Test match career, for although he played in 24 representative games, his skill and his power were as unpredictable as a thunderstorm or a nuclear explosion. He was known mainly as a fearsome right-arm fast bowler but, also, in Test matches he scored 1,146 runs, averaging 36.96 with two centuries. He batted left-handed and gloveless.
As a fast bowler, people of today who never saw him will get a fair idea of his presence and method if they have seen Wes Hall, the West Indian. Gregory, a giant of superb physique, ran some 20 yards to release the ball with a high step at gallop, then, at the moment of delivery, a huge leap, a great wave of energy breaking at the crest, and a follow-through nearly to the batsman’s door-step.
He lacked the silent rhythmic motion over the earth of EA (Ted) McDonald, his colleague in destruction. Gregory bowled as though against a gale of wind. It was as though he willed himself to bowl fast, at the risk of muscular dislocation. Alas, he did suffer physical dislocation, at Brisbane, in November 1928, putting an end to his active cricket when his age was 33.
He smote Gregory as any fast bowler has not often been smitten, except by Bradman and Dexter. Crawford actually drove a ball from Gregory, that immortal afternoon at Kennington Oval, into the pavilion, cracking and splintering his bat. When Rushby, the last man, went in Surrey still required 45 to save the follow-on. Crawford went on hitting magnificently and they added 80 in 35 minutes, Rushby’s share being a modest two. In some two hours Crawford scored 144 not out having hit two sixes and 18 fours. And Gregory applauded him generously.
He was a generous and likeable Australian. He gave himself to cricket with enthusiasm and relish. He enjoyed himself and was the cause of enjoyment in others. At Johannesburg in 1921, Gregory scored a century in 70 minutes v South Africa – the fastest hundred in the long history of Test cricket. He was a slip fielder of quite an unfair reach and alacrity, a Wally Hammond in enlargement, so to say, though not as graceful, effortless, and terpsichorean. Gregory was young manhood in excelsis. All who ever saw him and met him will remember and cherish him.
