Bill Ponsford was Australia’s oldest living Test cricketer and the sole survivor of H.L. Collins’s 1926 team in England. He made 162 in his second first-class game, for Victoria against Tasmania at Launceston in February 1922, but did not play for the state again until selected against the same opposition a year later in Melbourne. Then, in what was only his fourth innings, he created a sensation by hitting 429 in 477 minutes: it was the world’s highest first-class score until he bettered it five years later. Furthermore, Victoria’s 1,059 was the first four-figure total in any first-class match, and Ponsford, who was captaining his side, stayed until he made the 1,000th run himself, having gone in at 200-3.
Bill Ponsford scored an eye-watering number of runs for Australia in the inter-war years. His Wisden obituary in 1992 celebrated an extraordinary career.
He was soon to prove that his 429 was something more than money for old rope against moderate bowling, as some would have it. The previous record-holder, A.C. MacLaren, had protested peevishly at the status of the match. Four centuries for Victoria in 1923-24, including 248 out of 456 with Edgar Mayne for the first wicket against Queensland – still an Australian record – sounded a warning note of what was in store for bowlers.
In the Sheffield Shield, his runs totalled 5,413 at 83.27, and in 29 Tests he made 2,122 runs for an average of 48.22. A superb out-fielder in any position, he had 71 catches to his credit – although, when examined for war service, he was found to be red-green colour-blind. “Ponny” was a man of few words outside the dressing-room: shy, modest and shunning publicity at all costs. When he was “postered” in Sydney in 1928 after his extraordinary four-innings sequence, it must have given him nightmares; the flow of runs suddenly stopped. Few, however, have been more eloquent with the bat than the great Victorian.
Ponsford, William Harold died on April 6, 1991; aged 90.
