Malcolm Charles Dolman (born 14 June 1960) is an Australian former
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.
Born in
North Adelaide, South Australia, Dolman started bowling
slow left-arm wrist-spin at primary school and was first noticed as a promising bowler aged 14.
[Coward, M. "Dolman, the wrong-un who has finally got it right", ''The Age'', 13 January 1982, p. 23.] He began appearing in representative schoolboy sides and made the Australian Young Cricketers team to England in 1977, playing two unofficial
One Day International
A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World C ...
s against England Young Cricketers,
and an Australian U/19s tour to
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
, playing in an unofficial Test match.
Coached by former
Test spinner
Rex Sellers
Rex Samuel Sellers (born 11 November 1950) is a yachtman from New Zealand. He won a gold medal in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and a silver medal in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, both in the Tornado class with Chris Timms. He ...
,
[ Dolman also showed great promise in Adelaide Grade cricket and played colts matches for South Australia,][ although he was kept from first-class cricket for two years to mature him.][ This just intensified support for Dolman, who was being called "possibly the most innovative bowler in Australian cricket for a decade"][ and had former Test player Jack Fingleton calling for his inclusion in the national side before his first-class debut.
After returning from the Interstate Under 23 Cricket Carnival in December 1981, where he was considered one of the leading players, Dolman finally made his first-class debut for South Australia on 8 January 1982 against Queensland at the Adelaide Oval, taking 4/114 (his best bowling figures) and 2/47.
Following his successful first-class debut, Dolman was awarded an Esso Australian Cricket Scholarship for the 1982 English cricket season, where he played for Warwickshire County Cricket Club's Second XI in the ]Second XI Championship
The Second XI Championship is a season-long cricket competition in England that is competed for by the reserve teams of those county cricket clubs that have first-class status. The competition started in 1959 and has been contested annually ever ...
, playing six matches and taking 39 wickets at 14.90, with a best return of 7/38 against Leicestershire Second XI, and scoring 174 runs at 29.00, with a highest score of 82 against Leicestershire. The former Australian Test spinner Ashley Mallett called him the most exciting spin prospect he had ever seen[Frith, p. 179.] and English cricket writer David Frith was also enthusiastic about Dolman's cricketing future.[ Nevertheless, Dolman's second season of first-class cricket proved to be his last, consisting of only a single match against the touring English side on 31 October 1982, when he took 2/72.][
]
Sources
* Frith, D. (1984) ''The Slow Men'', Richard Smart Publishing. .
* Ryan, C. (2009) ''Golden Boy'', Allen & Unwin, Sydney. .
* ''South Australian Cricket Association (S.A.C.A.) Annual Report'' 1981–82, S.A.C.A.: Adelaide.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dolman, Malcolm
1960 births
Australian cricketers
Living people
South Australia cricketers
Cricketers from Adelaide