Test Match Player Who Had Row Of “Ducks”

Southland Times, Issue 24056, 21 February 1940, Page 10

Test Match Player Who Had Row Of “Ducks”

Five years ago, Lindsay Hassett, hero of Victoria’s first innings against New South Wales in the recent Sheffield Shield match, travelled 2100 miles from Geelong to Melbourne and back to play in club matches—and never scored a run.

Hassett scored eight successive “ducks”—possibly the greatest number ever strung together by a first-class batsman. Hassett is a humorist. After the first two or three “ducks,” according to Jack Fingleton, he began to see the humour of rushing from his accountancy job in Geelong, the long trip to Melbourne, the late home-com-ing in the night—and all for “now’t.” After he had notched five “noughts,” he was hurrying to the ground one Saturday, when he collided with a woman, and turned to apologize. The woman was cross-eyed!

With misgivings, he continued to the ground and, near the gates, a black cat ran across his path. Hassett is not usually superstitious

but when he was handed a locker key numbered 13 he knew the game was up. That afternoon he made two “ducks.”

“Hassett is the smallest first-class cricketer in Australia and there was no funnier sight in England,” says Fingleton, “than to see him lording it over two first-class players, and ‘Fanny’ balden, the umpire, who were even smaller than he. “Yet, for all his lack of inches, I would unhesitatingly, nominate Hassett now, as, in my experience, Australia’s best all-round sportsman. “He is one of the world’s best batsmen. They rave in Melbourne of his football prowess. He is a low-marker in golf, with a faultless style. And, to cap it all, he is a really class tennis player. “Quiet, imperturbable, Hassett is the essence of modesty. He hates dancing—has never danced in his life—but he loves company.”