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Robbie MacDonald

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Robbie MacDonald
Personal information
Full name
Robert MacDonald
Born(1870-02-14)14 February 1870
Clunes, Victoria, Australia
Died7 March 1946(1946-03-07) (aged 76)
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
BattingRight-handed
BowlingRight-arm leg-spin
Domestic team information
YearsTeam
1893-94 to 1903-04Queensland
1899 to 1902Leicestershire
Career statistics
Competition First-class
Matches 48
Runs scored 2069
Batting average 31.83
100s/50s 4/8
Top score 147 not out
Balls bowled 284
Wickets 3
Bowling average 60.33
5 wickets in innings 0
10 wickets in match 0
Best bowling 3/49
Catches/stumpings 34/0
Source: Cricinfo, 27 July 2019

Robert MacDonald (14 February 1870 – 7 March 1946) was an Australian cricketer who played first-class cricket for Queensland and Leicestershire from 1894 to 1903. He was born in Clunes, Victoria, Australia, and died in Victoria, British Columbia. He was a dentist.[1]

Life and career

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Born in the goldfields town of Clunes in Victoria, Robbie MacDonald moved to Brisbane in 1881 with his mother and his stepfather, Justice A. B. Noel.[2] After attending Brisbane Boys Grammar School MacDonald studied dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania, where he excelled. He was the first Queenslander to graduate as a doctor of dental surgery with honours.[3]

In cricket, MacDonald had a reputation as an imperturbable defensive batsman. The English player and writer C. B. Fry said of him in 1901: "he pays extreme attention to not getting out, and has no regard for the time it takes to make his runs. He is an excellent antidote to the modern tendency to try for high hitting. He never hits a ball, but just pushes and blocks, pushes and blocks. His skill, however, in defence is most remarkable: and I doubt whether there has ever been a more perfect player in his own particular line."[4] In a match for Leicestershire against Sussex in 1902 he batted for three and three-quarter hours for 33, in what an English newspaper called "a wonderfully patient innings".[5] In 1902-03 he batted 375 minutes in the match to make 51 and 61 not out when Queensland lost narrowly to New South Wales.[6][7]

MacDonald's highest first-class score was 147 not out for Leicestershire against Derbyshire in 1901, when he added 142 for the fourth wicket with John King and then made an unbroken stand of 226 for the fifth wicket with Frederic Geeson. Leicestershire won by an innings.[8] A week earlier he had made 127 against Sussex, batting for about six hours.[9] His only first-class century for Queensland came on the state team's tour of New Zealand in 1896–97, when he made 114 against Hawke's Bay, adding 228 for the sixth wicket with Owen Cowley.[10] Playing for Valley in the Brisbane senior competition in 1898–99, he made 812 runs in 13 innings, with an average of 203.00, as he was not out nine times.[11]

MacDonald served as secretary of the Queensland Cricket Association in 1894–95, and secretary of Leicestershire from 1922 to 1930. He also represented Australia on the Imperial Cricket Conference between the wars.[2] He was instrumental in the reconciliation of the Australian and English cricket authorities after the acrimonious Bodyline series between the two countries in 1932–33.[12][13][14] Sensing that feeling in England in the 1933 season was turning against the bodyline tactics that had given England victory in the 1932–33 series, he advised the Australian board to maintain gentle but firm pressure on the English authorities to forswear such tactics during the forthcoming Australian tour of England in 1934.[15]

References

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  1. ^ "Sporting Notes". Worker: 14. 1 August 1908.
  2. ^ a b The Oxford Companion to Australian Cricket, Oxford, Melbourne, 1996, p. 321.
  3. ^ "Young Queenslander: Overtops a Lot of Yankees". The Telegraph: 5. 5 April 1892.
  4. ^ "Miscellaneous Sporting". Brisbane Courier: 8. 7 October 1901.
  5. ^ "Cricket and Other Notes". Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser: 2. 15 November 1902.
  6. ^ A. G. Moyes, Australian Cricket: A History, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1959, p. 67.
  7. ^ "New South Wales v Queensland 1902-03". Cricinfo. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  8. ^ "Derbyshire v Leicestershire 1901". Cricinfo. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  9. ^ "Queensland Cricketer: First Century in County Play". The Telegraph: 13. 24 August 1901.
  10. ^ "Hawke's Bay v Queensland 1896-97". CricketArchive. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  11. ^ "Electoral Cricket". The Telegraph: 6. 27 March 1899.
  12. ^ "Board was misled". The Telegraph: 1. 18 October 1933.
  13. ^ "South Australia Has Had No Australian Eleven Manager". Referee: 17. 7 September 1933.
  14. ^ "Dr. MacDonald's Good Work". The West Australian: 8. 21 December 1933.
  15. ^ David Frith, Bodyline Autopsy, ABC Books, Sydney, 2002, pp. 364–75.
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