John Ernest Mills (3 September 1905 – 11 December 1972), known as Jackie Mills, was a New Zealand

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 str ...

er who played in seven Test matches between 1930 and 1933.

Cricket career

Jackie Mills's father

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was an all-rounder who played for

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in the 1890s and 1900s and was the groundsman at Eden Park in

. A left-handed opening batsman, Mills played for Auckland from 1924–25 to 1937–38, and toured England with the New Zealand teams of 1927 and 1931, scoring over 1000 runs on each tour. In an Auckland senior club match for Eden against University in 1924–25, Mills and Hector Gillespie shared an opening stand of 441. In the first match of the 1929-30

Plunket Shield New Zealand has had a domestic first-class cricket championship since the 1906–07 season. Since the 2009–10 season it has been known by its original name of the Plunket Shield. History The Plunket Shield competition was instigated in Octob ...

season he scored 185, his highest score, in an innings victory for Auckland over Otago. He scored more than half of Auckland's total of 356, and more than Otago's two innings combined. He was the first New Zealander to make a Test century on debut. He scored 117 for New Zealand against

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, in 1929–30, and he and Stewie Dempster put on 276 for the first wicket. However, Mills's next nine Test innings produced only 124 runs.

Dick Brittenden Richard Trevor Brittenden (22 August 1919 – 10 June 2002) was from the 1950s to the 1980s New Zealand's most prominent cricket writer. Early life, family and career Brittenden was born at Rakaia on 22 August 1919, and was educated at Chris ...

said: "Mills, lean and graceful, never seemed sufficiently robust for the demands of test cricket; he could probably claim to be the only test batsman who habitually wore wool, from neck to ankle, next to the skin. But if his batting looked effete, it was effective. A most graceful driver and cutter, he had the left-hander's penchant for the hook. Spare and frail he was, but there was tremendous power which came from some hidden source; he was New Zealand's nearest approach to Woolley."R. T. Brittenden, ''Great Days in New Zealand Cricket'', A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, 1958, p. 61.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mills, John 1905 births 1972 deaths New Zealand Test cricketers Cricketers from Dunedin Cricketers who made a century on Test debut New Zealand cricketers Pre-1930 New Zealand representative cricketers Auckland cricketers