MR FERGUSON—SCORER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27505, 27 September 1950, Page 4

MR FERGUSON—SCORER

A remarkable character is travelling with the MCC side to Australia: Mr W. Ferguson, described simply as scorer and baggageman. For 45 years this has been his profession, says a writer

in the London Telegraph. All the English summer he has been with the West Indians. After Australia he will pick up the South Africans who visit England next season. Summer and winter, he travels with an Imperial cricket side. As might be expected, Mr Ferguson is regarded as an international figure, with no fixed abode. He is, in fact, an Australian and began as a scorer with the Australian side in 1905. He is reputed never to have lost a piece ox baggage. His score books are works of art, based on several systems which no one else can understand. An artist, he embellishes the opposite page of the book with pencil sketches of the ground, the match and the players. His charts, showing the principal scoring strokes of the batsmen, are famous. Characteristically, Sir Donald Bradman always makes a point of studying them more carefully than anyone else —and setting his field accordingly.