Charles Turner (cricketer)
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 Australia (AUS) |
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| Batting style | Right-hand bat | |
| Bowling type | Right-arm fast-medium | |
| Tests | First-class | |
| Matches | 17 | 155 |
| Runs scored | 323 | 3,856 |
| Batting average | 11.53 | 15.54 |
| 100s/50s | 0/0 | 2/11 |
| Top score | 29 | 103 |
| Balls bowled | 5,179 | 41,808 |
| Wickets | 101 | 993 |
| Bowling average | 16.53 | 14.25 |
| 5 wickets in innings | 11 | 102 |
| 10 wickets in match | 2 | 35 |
| Best bowling | 7/43 | 9/15 |
| Catches/stumpings | 8/0 | 85/0 |
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Test debut: January 28, 1887 |
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Charles Thomas Biass Turner (Bathurst, November 16, 1862 – January 1, 1944 in Manly, New South Wales, Australia) was a bowler who is regarded as one of the finest ever produced by Australia.
Many batsmen who played against him considered Turner without peer, a belief supported by his first-class record - even considering the fact that he played during a period of completely uncovered pitches and containing numerous unusually wet summers both at home and in England. He bowled right-hand medium pace with a relatively long and rhythmic run-up and a beautiful delivery that never aimed to exploit even his rather limited height of five feet nine inches (175 centimetres). He could vary his pace a great deal, and combined this with a perfect length and a vicious off-break that made him unplayable after rain. This unplayability on treacherous pitches earned him the nickname "Terror" Turner.
Among the most amazing feats Turner accomplished were:
- taking 283 wickets in the English season of 1888 for 11.27 runs each. This tally was 69 wickets ahead of Ted Peate's 1882 record, and has been bettered only by Tom Richardson in 1895 and Tich Freeman in 1928 and 1933.
- taking 314 wickets in all matches in 1888.
- taking 106 wickets in twelve matches in the Australian season of 1887/1888 - a record for any bowler in Australia
- taking 17 wickets for 50 runs against An England Eleven at Hastings in 1888. Of these 17, 14 were bowled, two lbw and one stumped - not a single catch was needed!.
- being the first Australian bowler to reach 100 wickets in Test matches.
- his 12 for 87 against England in his record season of 1887/1888 is still the best bowling analysis for a Test at the SCG.
Turner's early adventures in first-class cricket were unsuccessful, but in 1886/1887, when he moved from Bathurst to Sydney to become a banker, his skill developed to a remarkable degree with seventy first-class wickets at an amazing 7.68 runs each from just seven matches. In two games against Victoria he too eighteen wickets for 184 runs, but it was his excellence against Alfred Shaw's touring side that brought Turner fame amongst all English cricketers. In the first Test, after England were put in on a really sticky pitch, Turner was so unplayable he too six for fifteen, and in the second his combined figures were nine for 93.
The following year, Turner, with the Australian pitches already notorious for being difficult after rain, carried all before him in the wet weather of a La Niña summer, his best performances outside the Test including:
- 10 for 45 v Arthur Shrewsbury's XI;
- 16 for 79 in a second match v Arthur Shrewsbury's XI;
- 11 for 119 v G.F. Vernon's XI at the MCG;
- 5 for 17 in first innings for New South Wales v Victoria at the MCG.
In the appalling English summer of 1888, along with John Ferris, Turner accomplished so many notable performances as a bowler that it is impossible to list them all. However, it should be noted that he took ten for 53 in Australia's only win in the three-Test series at Lord's and took an amazing 9 for 15 versus An England Eleven at Stoke-on-Trent. He even showed ability as a batsman, scoring a maiden century at The Oval in the first game of the tour.
After three astonishing seasons, Turner's career could only go downwards. With El Niño holding sway, the wickets in Australia in 1888/1889 were unresponsive and Turner took only 29 wickets in six games in 1888/1889, and even fewer the following season. However, still regarded as the best bowler available for English conditions, Turner did not disappoint the selectors in 1890, taking a slightly-less-imposing but still superb 179 first-class wickets (215 in all games) but being unable to break England's dominance of Test cricket at the time.
In the following few Australian seasons, Turner continued to do well even if too little cricket was played for him to equal his records of the late 1880s. In the relatively dry English summer of 1893, Turner still was Australia's leading bowler with 148 wickets at 13.63, but the absence of Ferris and business commitments were slowly taking their toll on him. When England next toured in 1894/1895, Turner took his 100th wicket and had the unique (in Test cricket) distinction of getting no less a player than Bobby Peel stumped for a pair on a sticky wicket in Sydney. His record in this Test series was, actually, his best since 1888, but two years later his banking business required him to move to Queensland, where he was not able then to continue playing cricket apart from one match for his benefit as late as the 1909/1910 season - when he was 47 - that was not successful.
However, Turner continued to do service to the game in Australia as an administrator right through the early twentieth century. He commented, notably, on how greatly the game in Australia changed after the era in which he played due to a drier climate and improved pitch preparation (and also covering of pitches in Shield matches from the 1930s), which made Australian pitches almost impossible for bowlers of his type and led to reliance on leg spin.
On the 15th January, 2007, Turner was named in the NSW Cricket Team All Time Twelve, as part of the celebrations of 150 years of the NSW Cricket Team.
