Clarrie Grimmett

Clarence "Clarrie" Victor Grimmett was a New Zealand cricketer, who played Test match cricket for Australia. He is credited as the developer of the Flipper delivery.

History

Career in New Zealand

Grimmett was born in Duniden in the Otago province of New Zealand in 1891. Practicing assiduously at the Basin Reserve, Wellington, he first attracted attention at age fifteen when he took 6 for 5 and 8 for 1 for Wellington Schools in a representative match; he was playing Plunket Shield at seventeen. A schoolmaster encouraged him to concentrate on spin bowling rather than fast bowling. He played club cricket in Wellington, and made his first-class debut for Wellington at the age of 17. He was named as emergency for Reese's side which toured Australia in 1913-14, but no SOS came. At that time, New Zealand was not a Test cricketing nation, and in 1914 he moved to neighbouring Australia.

Career for Australia

He played club cricket in Sydney for 3 years. After marrying a Victorian, he moved to Melbourne, where he played first-class cricket for Victoria. He then moved to South Australia in 1923, but it is for his performances in Test cricket for the Australian cricket team that he is best remembered.

Grimmett played 37 Tests between 1924 and 1936, taking 216 wickets at an average of just 24.21 runs apiece. He took two five wicket hauls on debut against England in Sydney in 1925. He became the first bowler to reach the milestone of taking 200 Test wickets, and is one of only four Test bowlers that played in their first Test after the age of thirty to take more than 100 wickets, the other three being Dilip Doshi, Saeed Ajmal and Ryan Harris. He took an average of six wickets per match. Many wickets in the last four years of his Test career were taken bowling in tandem with fellow leg-spinner Bill O'Reilly.

Grimmett remains the only bowler with career figures of over 200 wickets in fewer than 40 Tests. He took a five-wicket 'bag' on 21 occasions, seven times finishing with ten wickets or more in a match. His Test career only began when he was aged 33, and ended when he was 44, playing his last Test against South Africa in Durban. Despite taking 44 wickets in the series, and continued success in first-class cricket, he was dropped for the 1936/7 series at home against England, replaced by Frank Ward, and did not join the 1938 tour to England.

His first-class records holds a total of 1,424 wickets in 248 matches between 1911 and 1941, again at a rate close to six wickets per match. This total included 5 wicket bags on over 120 occasions and - in one performance for a touring Australian side against Yorkshire in 1930, he took 10 wickets for 37 runs off 22.3 overs, one of only a very small number of players to have claimed all of the wickets in an innings. He took 513 wickets in his 79 Sheffield Shield matches.

Legacy

Grimmett was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1931, the same year as Donald Bradman. He died in Adelaide in 1980, but was posthumously inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 1996 as one of the ten inaugural members. On 30 September 2009, Clarrie Grimmett was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.

Statistics

Test Match 5-Wicket Hauls

Clarrie Grimmett's Test 5-Wicket Hauls
#	Figures	Against	City/Country	Venue	Year	Result
1 2	5/45 & 6/37	England	Sydney, Australia	Sydney Cricket Ground	1925	Won
3	5/88	England	Leeds, England	Headingley	1926	Drawn
4	5/102	England	Brisbane, Australia	Brisbane Exhibition Ground	1929	Lost
5	6/131	England	Adelaide, Australia	Adelaide Oval	1929	Lost
6 7	5/107 & 5/94	England	Nottingham, England	Trent Bridge	1930	Lost
8	6/167	England	London, England	Lord's	1930	Won
9	5/135	England	Leeds, England	Headingley	1930	Drawn
10	7/87	West Indies	Adelaide, Australia	Adelaide Oval	1930	Won
11	5/49	West Indies	Brisbane, Australia	Brisbane Exhibition Ground	1931	Won
12	6/92	South Africa	Melbourne, Australia	Melbourne Cricket Ground	1931	Won
13 14	7/117 & 7/83	South Africa	Adelaide, Australia	Adelaide Oval	1932	Won
15	5/81	England	Nottingham, England	Trent Bridge	1934	Won
16	5/64	England	London, England	The Oval	1934	Won
17 18	5/32 & 5/56	South Africa	Cape Town, South Africa	Newlands	1936	Won
19	7/40	South Africa	Johannesburg, South Africa	Wanderers	1936	Won
20 21	7/100 & 6/43	South Africa	Durban, South Africa	Kingsmead	1936	Won