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Short Leg – Who was Bert Folkard? – Part 2
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In the concluding episode on Bert Folkard (1878–1937), Tom is joined by co-authors Pat Rodgers and Peter Lloyd who discuss his style as both a batsman and bowler, his selection in the Australian squad of 1914, and his life and career after The Great War.
ABOUT PAT RODGERS: Pat has taught History and coached cricket at schools in Sydney for over 35 years. In 2021, The Perplexing and Tragic Life of Jack Cuffe was published and earned critical acclaim. Books on Sydney-born working-class cricketers Alex Kermode and Arthur McBeath followed.
ABOUT PETER LLOYD: Peter has written extensively on cricket, winning various awards for his research and prose. Most recently, in-depth biographies of three 'Golden Age' cricketers – Warren Bardsley, Monty Noble and Charlie Macartney – have stamped him as a social historian of the highest order.
DONATE: You can buy Tom Ford a coffee! Every donation helps with production and inspires Tom to keep the podcast going. You can donate from a little as $5. Visit: buymeacoffee.com/GoldenAgeOfCricket
CREDITS: Presenter & Producer: Tom Ford
All music used in podcast comes from the University of California Santa Barbara’s remarkable collection of wax cylinder’s from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which are free to download and use. You can donate to the upkeep of these recordings via their website.
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Transcript
Introduction to Bert's Cricketing Style
00:00:00
Speaker
In the good old summertime, in the good old summertime. Well, let's return to the cricket discussion. You've each alluded already to his cricketing ability, but let's knuckle down on his style a bit more and just how good a cricketer he was. um For our listeners, can you describe what sort of cricketing style he had?
00:00:30
Speaker
both with bat and ball? And is there anyone that you can liken his style to, either contemporaneous or modern? I think what one thing Peter mentioned earlier was that Bert loved playing cricket. He was a cricket tragic. He was playing midweek. He was playing you know every Saturday. He was playing interstate cricket. He was always available and he was often captaining teams. What sort of cricketer he was? Definitely a very hard-hitting, aggressive batsman. Those many hundreds he got at all levels of cricket were in even time or better from the from the records that we've been able to find. Lots of his centuries turned into very big centuries. There were you know at least two or three double centuries for Balmain first grade.
00:01:17
Speaker
So again, for people outside of Sydney, this is the level beneath interstate cricket, first class cricket. So a very high level against a lot of very good players who would have been Australian players, New South Wales players. And he was obviously a very determined batsman. Once he was in and he was hitting them well, he stayed in and he was quite happy to keep batting.
Bert's Performance and Selection Challenges
00:01:40
Speaker
As a bowler, he's probably not much more above medium pace. um There's a photo of him, I think, in the book where the keeper's standing up to the stumps to him.
00:01:50
Speaker
He seemed to have swung the ball away, cut it back in, was very clever. Just like his batting, once he got the ball in his hand, he bowled a lot and he bowled marathon spells, particularly for Balmain.
00:02:03
Speaker
He didn't mind as captain keeping himself on for lengthy spells. And um as a fieldsman, as Peter's mentioned, he was big framed, good catcher, but this is something that definitely held him back because by the time he's in the New South Wales team, he's in his 30s and he's put on a fair bit of weight.
00:02:24
Speaker
He's lumbering around in the field and it certainly would have hurt his selection because his selection for New South Wales was intermittent,
Authors' Book Collaboration and Challenges
00:02:32
Speaker
wasn't it? Like he plays two or three games and he's dropped and then he's back in the team.
00:02:37
Speaker
And I think the fielding is mentioned in press reports as letting him down. So while a very good all-rounder, ah particularly bat and ball, probably fielding was his third third sort of discipline.
00:02:52
Speaker
He would have definitely been ah a very good 2020 player in in the current day. You know, it's certainly a limited over player, hard hitting, clever bowler, um someone maybe in the style. i found it hard to sort of find someone to compare him to, but like an Ian Botham, you know, not really flat out quick as a bowler, but um very hard hitting and big framed. And Andrew Flintoff or Ian Botham, sorry, I couldn't find an Australian comparison. But I don't know, Tom, um whether you've heard or are aware we are,
00:03:30
Speaker
Pat and I are now doing a subsequent book. So ah the Bird Falcon book was published in August. Here we are now, through three and a bit months later, and we're well underway with another book ah because we're cricket tragics too. And we do complement one another quite well.
00:03:48
Speaker
The problem with Pat, though, that he has a full-time job, and I can be bit demanding, I think, in some ways. So anyhow, we we're with it we're very we're very good. i i can say I can sympathize, Pat. I can sympathize. So um I was going to say something about how it's sometimes awkward when you're co-authoring a book because... You might have different styles. And in ah in ah in a book that's cohesive, it should be complementary. It should be ah consistently written in the same fashion. So we work quite well in that way. And we don't mind one another. um
00:04:29
Speaker
tidying up expressions, etc. So at the moment we're writing this book about the New South Wales a state tour of New Zealand and nine in twenty three twenty four which happens to be um led by charlie mccartney but In that tour, I've become quite familiar with one of the better New Zealand cricketers who went on play for Gloucestershire for a long time, Cess Dacre.
00:04:54
Speaker
And he immediately strikes me as being exactly the style of batsman that Falkard was.
Bert's Achievements and Impact of the Great War
00:05:01
Speaker
And some of your audience may be familiar with Cess. played senior cricket for New Zealand before they had authorised test status. And by the time he went to England and had through his residency he and being there playing for Gloucestershire for a long time, and he missed out on playing official test cricket for New Zealand. But he played two, more than two, but he played these the two internationals against Charlie McCarthy's side in 1924. And he scored a um um magnificent on the in the Basin
00:05:37
Speaker
on the basin reserve um in wellington And Charlie said to him that he could see Cess as being successful against any comers at all. And he hit the ball so hard, Wally Hammond and said that um he'd never seen somebody hit the ball so hard. He could hit the ball so that it would clear the pickets without having been lifted at all.
00:06:01
Speaker
So Falkard was that style of player. And he was aggressive, aggressive. ah He had a ah mindset of attack, which is what Charlie enjoyed seeing when he first um came across him and in that early era, 1902.
00:06:19
Speaker
As far as bowling was concerned, ah i think he was able to get into a rhythm. which meant that even though he bowled for long sessions, the stamina that he had meant that he conserved his energies.
00:06:32
Speaker
um And you know flatten never flagged, not until he came back, I think inappropriately, much later after the after the Great War when he was...
00:06:44
Speaker
asked to come back to help coach some of the emerging players he probably stayed on too long at that stage but um and he was you know well into his late 30s by that point but prior to then he could bowl flat out although as pat says at medium pace but he was he did have great control and he mesmerized batsmen he they just didn't have any especially the ones who weren't really top class uh the miscellaneous matches that he played against teams of um ah government bureaucracies and police force and allboys school old boys and the like, they had no answer to him. He'd get a bag of wickets for nothing and then score 100 against them.
00:07:28
Speaker
This thought has just crystallised listening to you both speak. And I'm thinking of a direct contemporary of his that he could be likened to, but not at all in style, but more in, I suppose, his approach to cricket.
00:07:42
Speaker
Listening to Pat talk about he would play any game, any opportunity, and that he was a big frame and he could do it with both bat and ball would be like a Warwick Armstrong. Someone who could just dominate on the field, both in terms of his size, but also being able to switch between bat and ball. But, I mean, you listen to Gideon Hay talk about Warwick just taking any opportunity, whether it was against professionals or against children,
00:08:09
Speaker
He just loved the game of cricket. um But also listening to it sounds like he was quite a different sort stylist to Warwick. Oh, yes. Warwick was um obviously a leg of ah slower bowler.
00:08:23
Speaker
And he was also, he could be, if he wanted to be, um ah somebody who could just pat the ball back, incessantly, but he obviously, if he if he wanted to be rigorous, he could be. But Falca didn't have that in his nature. He would just go outright attack from the beginning.
00:08:53
Speaker
So following some very strong form for both club and state, he is then offered, this is Bert Falkart, offered a place on the so in the Australian squad scheduled to tour South Africa in November of 1914.
00:09:09
Speaker
How much was his selection justified and how much of it fell into his lap following the big fallout from the Big Six dispute in 1912? So by 1914, Bert's 36, and certainly luck played a role in um his selection, eventual selection in the Australian team, but never two in South Africa, obviously because of the Great
Bert's Selection Challenges and Family Life
00:09:33
Speaker
War. There were a lot of withdrawals, a lot of unavailabilities. We go through those in detail in the book. um
00:09:40
Speaker
There were probably more qualified, younger players, possibly better suited to um to Australian selection. But in Burt's defence, he had performed very well against the South Africans when they toured here about four years before this. And he um and he took six for 38 on Debu against them.
00:10:03
Speaker
um And so he had form on the board against the the South Africans. And he had been in tremendous club form that season, 19, 13, 14, in the lead up to the selection for this tourer. And even in the first-class cricket, he had 20 wickets at an average of 20 that year.
00:10:21
Speaker
So he was possibly not at the peak of his powers, but he was certainly churning out runs and and wickets at club level and and taking wickets at first-class level. And Clem Hill, we think, who'd been to South Africa in in the early nineteen hundreds uh knew the conditions well the mats the matting uh pitches that the south africans were playing on until well into the 20s um would have suited burt's bowling where he would have been able to get some cut off him um and just his character too which we've alluded to um he was a he would have been a good man to have on the tour of a good mentor for younger players um
00:11:04
Speaker
But look, Hill and Trumper and Roy Manette and Horton and Massey and Ransford were all that available. Eric Barber, who is very close to Bert, as we point out in the book, pulled out because of medical um exams at Sydney Uni. Gerry Haslett, the spinner,
00:11:22
Speaker
um was very ill by this stage. He was to die the next year at the King's School where he was teaching. So it really left in the touring team only McCartney and Armstrong as the spinners. um So you'd think that when Hazlitt pulled out, he'd be replaced by a spinner.
00:11:41
Speaker
There was a perfectly good one in Arthur Bailey, even though fairly early in his career, but he had toured America a couple of times, north north America,
00:11:53
Speaker
Bert Collins, bolts and left arm spin, as well as being a very good batsman. He was very unlucky to miss selection. Jimmy Matthews and Sid Emery from the 1912 tour was still around, but probably had their cards marked from that tour.
00:12:08
Speaker
um And there was Bert Ironmonger, but who wasn't a young man at this stage, yeah but ah he was a little bit younger than Bert. Fogart, our Burt, but he was performing very well for Queensland and then ah down to Victoria in that season. So there were there were options there for the selectors, but for whatever reason, Burt was chosen, probably to his surprise.
00:12:34
Speaker
um But within a few days of his selection, war broke out and that was the end of his chance of playing for Australia. before the war broke out and the the whole thing was called off, he was able to get leave from Callum Park, which was must have been um a big ask for the authorities, but perhaps because of his longevity with the with the park and the effort that he put into helping with the the attention for the, for the clients. Um, they felt that he warranted being given, it's going to 200 pound trip, I think probably over about three months.
00:13:12
Speaker
And, Bert's family, we don't talk a lot about the wife in his wife in the book. Because we don't know a lot about her, but um she was obviously a salt of the earth type of person and gave her all the support she could.
00:13:27
Speaker
ah ah Four surviving children, Pat? and Under 10? Under 10, yes. So his being away would have been... difficult but as we said before big family many of them living close by there would have been a lot of support there for for the mrs polkart whose name just escapes me pat well she was called annie but marianne marianne annie yeah yeah so that's what happens when you're writing another book you get a little bit
00:13:59
Speaker
You'd think of all people to remember Mary Ann, it would be the biographer of Monty Noble. Exactly. yeah exactly um And also, of course, um ah ah Charlie McCartney's wife was Annie, although known as Nan. So, yes. so All variations on a theme, really. Exactly.
00:14:20
Speaker
So you mentioned the ah the curtain coming down on not only Burt's career, but every cricketer's career effectively with the start of the Great War. um What can you tell us about his cricket career from then on? ah Could he ever, I mean, as you say, he's already in his mid-30s. Could he ever recapture his previous form?
00:14:43
Speaker
So looking at the ah grade season statistics, there's a wonderful um table in the book.
Bert's Post-War Cricket Involvement
00:14:50
Speaker
If you haven't got a copy of this book, you should buy one. You might find it difficult to get one. But um he continued to pile up the runs and the wickets well into the 20s to a point where he was still the leading batsman and bowler for Bellarmine and on occasions the leading Sydney Graves.
00:15:12
Speaker
cricket bowler more than the batsman, but he would it had took more wickets and at a reasonably ah economic rate well into his well into the twenty s He decided, though, in twenty three twenty four that injuries were keeping him out of the game he only played two matches in nine in twenty two twenty three And I think he felt that his time had come.
00:15:38
Speaker
So he essentially retired from grade cricket, still played Callum Park and didn't seem to slow down. They they were playing 30, 40, 50 games a season. And he was in all of them. And he was, as Pat said, he was not only playing, but he was also curating the field. and encouraging others and um maintaining his heavy involvement with the care of the of the clients as well. Busy life and the children at home. he
00:16:10
Speaker
He was called back by the senior people in Balmain when Archie Jackson appeared on the scene as a 15-year-old, and Arthur Maley and one or two others saw something in in Archie that was beyond belief, and they felt that Bert was the right person to help mentor and counsel him and show him how best to...
00:16:31
Speaker
develop his ah his aptitude to competing with at at at the ah senior level on a regular basis. Archie was at that point healthy and very keen, enthusiastic, more of a showman than Bert ever was, I think, even as a young man, um which his character, i think, allowed that to be accepted by others. um So Bert came back and played for an entire season in 1925-26 and did very poorly and decided then that that was it. He still was around and about the club, but um he didn't feel that he had the capacity to to to contribute more on the field.
00:17:20
Speaker
But I should say there's one other thing that happened post-war, and I'm just looking at Ray Webster's wonderful volume. I know you've got a copy of it, Tom, and you two, Pat. um yeah He was selected for New South Wales against um the MCC in February 1921.
00:17:38
Speaker
um to play in a match between the fourth and fifth tests of that Ashes series. um And for me, it was delightful to recount his involvement in that game because that state game against the MCC, Douglas' side,
00:17:58
Speaker
It was the reincarnation of Charlie McCartney after a long spell away from ah first-class cricket where he his health wasn't his mental health wasn't allowing him to play. He had a phenomenally successful match, did Charlie, and went on then to even higher things in the fifth test as most people will be familiar in Sydney where he scored that massive 170 to completely Australia whitewash but in the game that Bert played in in Sydney and he was in a side that had
00:18:36
Speaker
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight test players. So he was one of three who hadn't played test cricket. and Both the the others went on to play test cricket. And he didn't perform very well in that match. He scored um nine and and zero and didn't take any wickets.
00:18:54
Speaker
But Burt Collins, the captain of the site, did him the honour of allowing him to open in the second innings. when unfortunately he was bowled in the second over, but he was still held in that sort of regard. And he was in the team, I think, um I'm sure it was a gesture on the part of the state selectors.
00:19:14
Speaker
He probably by that stage was beyond his able ability to contribute meaningfully, but he just enjoyed, he had a, he he really enjoyed being in that in that
Bert's Legacy and Influence on Cricket
00:19:25
Speaker
squad.
00:19:25
Speaker
And um I think he probably knew that it had been some sort of a, an offering of of gratitude for his lifelong commitment. I think he was a late replacement in that game, if I remember, Peter. So he was he was sort of joddy on the spot and they were happy to give him that final farewell game. But he's 43 at that stage. 43, yes. Yeah. And I know cricketers played a lot longer in those days. But... I'll just add one thing to that, and that is, as Peter says, he plays for Callum Park right through the 20s into the early 30s.
00:19:58
Speaker
By the time he's in his early 50s, he's captaining a team at Callum Park against a side that includes Don Bradman and other yeah and other luminaries. So he's he's played against and with Trumper in the early 1900s, and then he ends up in one of his final games playing against Bradman. So that's the sort of span of his career that we've that we've dealt with.
00:20:21
Speaker
so It's just like Wilford Rhodes, really, that huge span and a very, very similar sort of timeframe. The Troubleman of Rabin, yeah. yeahp Just back to what you were saying, Peter, about the New South Wales team. It's nice to know that 100 years ago, the entire Australian team came from New South Wales. nothing Yeah. Nothing changes, does it? Nothing changes. Nothing changes. Spoken like a true South Australian. Yeah, exactly.
00:20:49
Speaker
Well, i know in the in the tour book coming coming out, which will probably be produced in in February, so keep an eye out for the flyer that will be sent around. um Pat's very keen on on pushing the fact that some us and them ah Austin pence should have been on the 21 tour, because but he missed out because he was a New South Welshman.
00:21:14
Speaker
the The balance of the side was already skewed towards the mother stage, and it would have been furtherthest further done so. but yes he would have but He would have been the 10th player, but they already had nine. Yeah.
00:21:27
Speaker
In summary, gentlemen, what is the legacy of Bert Folkart today? And are there any is there anything from his life that we can learn from today?
00:21:39
Speaker
I think um both Peter and i grew to like Bert. you know He was just a ah straight up and down, very solid citizen, um but a very dedicated mental health attendant.
00:21:52
Speaker
As we've said a number of times, that was an incredibly demanding job in those days. There were overcrowded asylums. He had lot of unpredictable patients under his care. There was violence, obviously, and And he was very dedicated to that work for over three decades, as I've said. So here's a man. I've done other books on troubled characters. Sid Emery was Mad Mick and Jack Cuff, unfortunately, killed himself and and other people that I've written about, have had this troubled character. Bert wasn't troubled, I don't think. He was very happy in his own skin. He's a great example of persistence, a man who lived to high values, a very good family man from what we can gather.
00:22:41
Speaker
Obviously, a highly regarded cricketer and captain and leader and mentor and elder statesman. He was a veteran for a long time in Sydney cricket and he was highly regarded. So,
00:22:54
Speaker
From my point of view, he's someone I've enjoyed researching, writing about and um and have grown to like for art for all those qualities that he brought. So ah Pat, he also, as did many of the others in his profession, suffer from a lot of um negative publicity, ah yes a social appropriation about um the the dregs of society getting involved with taking on the role of carers for the for the insane. And i think Bert and ah many others were examples of folk who weren't at all inclined that way. They were caring They wanted to be in that job because they felt they were contributing. And and even today, I'm sure that service folk in the health sector,
00:23:39
Speaker
ah um the roles are and underappreciated. They were in birth stay, and I think that remains the case even now. um he He fought through that. He just he blocked it out.
00:23:54
Speaker
He knew that he was doing um good work, and I think that helped um helped his soul. I'll just add one thing there that Burt played um cricket for Burt was obviously a release from that very demanding work he was doing at the hospital. But ironically, a lot of his cricket was played at the hospital. So he wasn't too far away from where those demands um were, but he was able to balance that very well. So
00:24:24
Speaker
As I said at the start, what attracted me to him was he's a cricketer who had this other life, but that other life wasn't that far away at all from his cricketing life too.
00:24:35
Speaker
I think Rick Sissons has written a couple of good reviews on on the book. And think he came closest to appreciating as ah as ah as a ah reader what we were trying to achieve. And that was that um Bert was a seriously good cricketer.
00:24:53
Speaker
He just, for various reasons, as we've just discussed, never made it to the to the top tier. But nevertheless, his his his ah attributes, et cetera, as a cricketer were significant. um And Rick appreciated the fact that he also mentioned this about um about Sid Emery, I think.
00:25:14
Speaker
Cricketers who were playing in the golden era and but beyond, and who didn't quite make the grade for various reasons, still had something to offer the sport.
00:25:25
Speaker
And it's equally um ah valuable in having their stories told publicly as it is with people who are perhaps more famous. So and i thought that was quite insightful on Rick's part.