Arthur Mailey

Arthur Mailey

Personal information
Full name	Arthur Alfred Mailey
Born	(1886-01-03)3 January 1886 Zetland, New South Wales, Australia
Died	Kirrawee, New South Wales, Australia
Batting style	Right-hand batsman
Bowling style	Right-arm leg break and googly
Role	Bowler
International information
National side	Australia
Test debut (cap 108)	17 December 1920 v England
Last Test	14 August 1926 v England
Domestic team information
Years	Team
1912–1930	New South Wales
Career statistics
Competition Test First-class Matches 21 158 Runs scored 222 1530 Batting average 11.10 12.33 100s/50s 0/0 0/3 Top score 46* 66 Balls bowled 6119 35541 Wickets 99 779 Bowling average 33.91 24.09 5 wickets in innings 6 61 10 wickets in match 2 16 Best bowling 9/121 10/66 Catches/stumpings 14/– 157/–
Source: CricketArchive, 26 January 2009

Arthur Alfred Mailey (3 January 1886 in Zetland, New South Wales – 31 December 1967 in Kirrawee, New South Wales) was an Australian cricketer who played in 21 Test matches between 1920 and 1926.

Mailey used leg-break and googly bowling, taking 99 Test wickets, including 36 in the 1920-21 Ashes series. In the second innings of the fourth Test at Melbourne, he took nine wickets for 121 runs, which is still the Test record for an Australian bowler.

File:Arthur Mailey Cricket Sketches.jpg

Cover of Mailey sketchbook

In first-class cricket at Cheltenham during the 1921 tour, he took all ten Gloucestershire wickets for 66 runs in the second innings. His 1958 autobiography was accordingly titled Ten for 66 And All That.

He also holds the record for the most expensive bowling analysis in first-class cricket. Bowling for New South Wales at Melbourne in 1926-27 as Victoria scored the record first-class total of 1107, Mailey bowled 64 eight-ball overs, did not manage a maiden and took 4 for 362. He said that his figures would have been much better had not three sitters been dropped off his bowling -- "two by a man in the pavilion wearing a bowler hat" and one by an unfortunate team-mate whom he consoled with the words "I'm expecting to take a wicket any day now."

Beginning his working life as a labourer, he became a talented writer and artist. Between 1920 and 1953, he published a number of booklets of cartoons of cricketers of his time.

"Someone dubbed him the man who bowled like a millionaire, and how true it was! Arthur's objective was to take wickets, and the spending of runs in the process bothered him little. For a relatively small man Arthur had abnormally large hands, soft as silk to the touch, and he once told me he didn't know what it was to have tired or sore fingers". Don Bradman

External links

• Player profile: Arthur Mailey from ESPNcricinfo
• Player profile: Arthur Mailey from CricketArchive
• Mailey, Alfred Arthur (Australian Dictionary of Biography)
• Brief film of Mailey bowling on YouTube (5:47 to 6:07)