Jack Gregory Says Good-Bye to Big Cricket

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 537, 14 December 1928, Page 10

Jack Gregory Says Good-Bye to Big Cricket

Enforced Retirement Is Cricket Tragedy A GREAT CAREER Although J. M. Gregory is one of the few Australian Test match players who have never visited New Zealand, he is so well known and his outstanding personality so familiar to Maoriland cricket enthusiasts through the medium of letterpress, photogravure and the cinema, that it is safe to say that were he to step out on to the ■field at Eden Park to-morrow, the majority of spectators would only have to see him bowl to say, “That’s Gregory.” But it is unlikely that he will ever bowl a ball again in big cricket That \% the biggest tragedy of the Australian debacle at Brisbane. It is said that he broke the news to England's eleven in their quarters, saying, 4 *Boys, ! have bowled my last ball against you. I have finished for ever with first claes I cricket.** ' Jack Morrison Gregory was discovered by P. F. Warner (writes A.G.H. in the “Sydney Morning Herald”). After the signing of the Armistice, he •was bowling at the nets at Lords, and the batsman was the man who had successfully toured Australia in search of the ashes of English cricket. Warner was taken by surprise at the quality of Gregory’s attack, and he at once recommended that the New South Wales man should be taken into the A.I.F. team. At once, like a bolt from the blue, Gregory became famous as a bowler, a batsman, and as a •lipfielder. Such sensations did he cause during the A.I.F. tour, and for a space subsequently, that he was freely voted the all-round cricketer of the time.