BB king of Oz batsmen
Don’t miss Arts Tuesday in your GEELONG’S cricket history, and not just the fine flannelled figures featured right, boasts well-known names such as Hassett, Sheahan, Redpath.
Figures such as Tom Wills played a seminal role in the game’s development, coaching the Aborigines who made up the first Australian team to tour England, in 1868.
Other names include Alan Connolly, Wayne Phillips and even spinner Jack Iversen. But there’s another figure, lesserknown, who at his peak had only his cousin — the cricketing giant W.G. Grace — considered a better batsman.
No doubt with skills honed playing as kids together in the family apple orchard in Downend, near Bristol, this figure once racked up a century in a 283-run partnership with the amply-girthed legend at Lords, in 1869.
And while playing at South Melbourne in the mid-1870s, he attracted such crowds that the international sensation, tightrope-walker Blondin, remarked that people in Melbourne ‘‘had gone mad with cricket’’.
He played for Australia in the first Test against England, winning by 45 runs at the MCG in 1877, lived his final years out at Queenscliff, where he worked as a customs officer, and lies buried in plot CEO/ 6/48 in Geelong’s Eastern Cemetery.
For all his remarkable career with the willow and leather, Bransby Beauchamp Cooper is anything but a household name.
Indeed, until recent years, his grave was unmarked, littered with broken glass, twigs, shells and weeds, anonymous between the grey headstones and rusted ferrous grates of his neighbours.
He refused to practise because he considered it a form of slavery to be avoided. And he insisted professional cricketers, rather than gentlemen, do the heavy work of bowling and fielding. Different days indeed. But interesting when you consider the first match played by Colac, back in 1853, had bats made by a local wheelwright, the ball by a shoemaker, copious alcohol on hand, fiddlers fiddling, and folks dancing on the green while the match took place.
Bransby, of course, wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in today’s game but that’s by the by. But he is one of early cricket’s heroes. One of Australian cricket’s seminal figures and one of the game’s ornaments, if somewhat outdated. And one of the lesser-known gods in Geelong’s sporting pantheon.
As cricket authority Jack Pollard describes Cooper, he was ‘‘ an attractive, hardhitting right-hand batsman ... a true blue English amateur, never afraid to attack, though he could defend patiently when required’’.
He w a s a l s o a tidy wicketkeeper and in his firstclass career, knocked up a total 1600 runs at an average of 20.51, along with 61 dismissals — 41 catches and 20 stumpings.
Bransby Cooper was born in Dacca, India, on St Patrick’s Day 1844. He was educated at Rugby and had a successful career on its fields, for Middlesex and for Kent and in representative matches with W.G. Grace’s teams in the 1860s. The 283 knock with Grace at Lords was a first-class opening partnership record that stood for 23 years.
In 1869, Cooper migrated to Australia, never returning home. He played for the Victorian Cricket Club 11 times in inter-colonial games against New South Wales. In 1873, he belted 84 in a total of 266 for the Eighteen of Victoria when it beat W.G. Grace’s English team — it was his best Australian performance.
And, of course, he played for Australia in the first Test match against England. But it was late in his career and, regrettably, his showing wasn’t great, just 15 and 3. He wasn’t selected again.
On his retirement, he took up the Queenscliff customs job and worked there until shortly before his death in 1914.
Bransby Beauchamp Cooper might not be well known but as his gravestone tells us: ‘‘Upon the foundations laid by B.B. Cooper and his team, stands Australian Cricket!’’
That’s not a bad epitaph for any cricketer.
— NOEL MURPHY