Cuan Neil McCarthy (24 March 1929 – 14 August 2000) was a South African
cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...
er who played in fifteen
Test matches from 1948 to 1951.
Life and career
One of five children born to Victor and
Phyllis McCarthy, Cuan McCarthy grew up on "Glenaholm", a citrus and poultry farm just out of Pietermaritzburg, where his mother bred a famous line of
Rhodesian Ridgeback
The Rhodesian Ridgeback is a large dog breed bred in the Southern Africa region. Its forebears can be traced to the semi-domesticated ridged hunting and guardian dogs of the Khoikhoi. These were interbred with European dogs by the early colonist ...
dogs (Glenaholm Kennel). He received his secondary education at
Maritzburg College
Maritzburg College is a semi-private English-medium high school for boys situated in the city of Pietermaritzburg, in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was founded in 1863 and it's the oldest boys' high school in KwaZulu-Natal – and one of the ...
.
Cuan McCarthy was included in the national side for the first time at the age of 19. Six feet two inches (1.88m) tall, and a bowler of genuine pace who could command a deadly off-cutter, he opened the bowling for South Africa in his 15 Tests, spanning 1948 to 1951. He was no batsman and stands as one of the few cricketers to have taken more wickets than the number of runs scored: up to the end of 1951 his highest score in forty-five first-class games was only seven. On a pitch freshened by a sharp shower he produced his best bowling figures in his debut Test against the touring England team on his home turf at
Kingsmead Kingsmead may refer to:
Places in England
* Kingsmead, Bath, an electoral ward in Somerset
** Kingsmead Square, Bath
* Kingsmead, Cheshire
* Kingsmead, a district of Shenley Brook End in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
Other uses
* Kingsmead ...
, taking six wickets for 43 runs in the second innings.
In later games it was thought that he too often pitched short when he would have been deadly bowling to a much fuller length. This tendency was seen at its worst in the 1951 tour of England, especially on an extremely difficult pitch at
Old Trafford
Old Trafford () is a football stadium in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, and the home of Manchester United. With a capacity of 74,310 it is the largest club football stadium (and second-largest football stadium overall after Wemb ...
.
The following year, McCarthy moved to
Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College (officially "The Master, Fellows and Scholars of the College or Hall of Valence-Mary") is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 ...
, and was viewed as a valuable acquisition by the cricketing press. He bowled extremely well in taking forty-four wickets for the university at an average cost of little over seventeen each, but a controversy arose when at Worcester McCarthy became the first bowler to be no-balled for throwing in English first-class cricket since 1908. He was still allowed to bowl for the rest of the match, and was thought so good that he played for the Gentlemen at Lord's and Scarborough, without meeting with pronounced success.
Although at this point McCarthy was established as a major bowling force, it turned out that he was never to be seen again in first-class cricket. After being at Cambridge in 1952, McCarthy stayed on in Britain but was still thought a candidate for the 1952/1953 tour of Australia. However, he was not chosen and his only later cricket was in the
Minor Counties Championship
The NCCA 3 Day Championship (previously the Minor Counties Cricket Championship) is a season-long competition in England and Wales that is contested by the members of the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), the so-called national cou ...
for Dorset, where he settled in subsequent years before returning to South Africa as a farmer.
[Wright; ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'' (2001); p. 1594]
Personal life
He married Margaret Gillian Trotter in January 1954. The couple had three children. In 1972 he married Valerie Parham from
Rhodesia
Rhodesia (, ), officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in territory to modern Zimbabwe. Rhodesia was the ''de facto'' successor state to the British colony of S ...
and they had a son.
See also
*
References
External links
Great Test MatchesMaritzburg College*
{{DEFAULTSORT:McCarthy, Cuan
1929 births
2000 deaths
Alumni of Maritzburg College
Alumni of Pembroke College, Cambridge
South Africa Test cricketers
South African cricketers
Cambridge University cricketers
South African Universities cricketers
Dorset cricketers
Gentlemen cricketers
KwaZulu-Natal cricketers
Commonwealth XI cricketers
Cricketers who have taken five wickets on Test debut
T. N. Pearce's XI cricketers