Kentish Express Ashford & District
Tormenting the Aussies became a habit
Though the Australians might not have known too much about Bob Woolmer before his part in Kent’s win – he had scored 9 and 0 against them in 1972 – they were probably sick of the sight of him by the end of the summer, writes Mark Stokes. Days after his starring role for Kent, he played for the MCC against the Australians at Lord’s, taking 4-45, including a hat-trick, alongside scores of 55 and 85. That led to his Test debut for England later that summer and he quickly won a place in the record books when his marathon knock of 149 helped England to secure a draw after following on in the fourth Test at The Oval. Playing his second Test and promoted from No.8 to No.5 after scores of 33 and 31 on his debut at Lord’s, Woolmer took six hours and 36 minutes to reach three figures, making it, at the time, the slowest hundred made by an Englishman against Australia. When he was last out with the total on 538, he had faced a total of 390 deliveries and been at the crease for eight hours and 19 minutes. Australia won the four-Test series 1-0 but when they returned in 1977, Woolmer was again to prove a thorn in their side, adding two more centuries as England took that series 3-0. Woolmer, whose England one-day debut had been against the Aussies in 1972, was man-of-the-match in the drawn first Test at Lord’s with scores of 79 and 120 and he made it three centuries in just six innings against the Aussies when he added 137 in the first innings of the second Test at Manchester. By scoring centuries in successive innings against the Aussies, Woolmer, now batting at No.3, became the first Englishman since Ken Barrington in 1966 to do so. Unusually for an Englishman after the Second World War, all his Test centuries were made against the Old Enemy.