Bill Ponsford
William Harold Ponsford MBE was an Australian cricketer. Usually playing as an opening batsman, he formed a successful partnership opening the batting for Victoria and Australia with Bill Woodfull. He is the only player to twice break the world record for the highest individual score in first-class cricket. He also holds the Australian record for a partnership in Test cricket, set in 1934 in combination with Don Bradman.
About Bill Ponsford in brief
William Harold Ponsford MBE was an Australian cricketer. Usually playing as an opening batsman, he formed a successful and long-lived partnership opening the batting for Victoria and Australia with Bill Woodfull. He is the only player to twice break the world record for the highest individual score in first-class cricket. He also holds the Australian record for a partnership in Test cricket, set in 1934 in combination with Don Bradman. In recognition of his contributions as a player, he was one of the ten initial inductees into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame. He was a shy and taciturn man. After retiring from cricket, he went to some lengths to avoid interaction with the public. He spent over three decades working for the Melbourne Cricket Club, where he had some responsibility for the operations of the MCG. His local grade club, Fitzroy, awarded him a medallion for being his school’s outstanding cricketers in the 1913–14 and 1914–15 seasons. In 1981 the Western Stand at theMCG was renamed the WH Pons Ford Stand in his honour. The Western Stand was demolished in 2003 as part of the redevelopment of the ground for the 2006 Commonwealth Games, but its replacement was also named the WHPonsford Stand. He died in a car crash in Melbourne in 1998, aged 83. He had a son, Peter, who was also a first- class crickler and a member of St Kilda Cricket Club. His daughter, Victoria, is a former first class batsman and a former Australian cricket team captain.
She died in 2011 at the age of 83. She was the first woman to be awarded the MBE for services to cricket. She is also the only woman to have played first class cricket for Australia and New South Wales. Her son Peter is now a cricket coach and coach at the University of Melbourne. His son Peter has also played cricket for Melbourne and Victoria. He retired from the game in 2003 after a long career as a coach and cricket coach. He has also been a director of a number of Australian cricket clubs, including Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane. He passed the Bank Clerk’s exam in 1916 and worked at the Elizabeth Street head office of the State Savings Bank until his death in 2004. He left the bank to pursue a career in banking. He later became a bank executive and was the owner of a bank in Elsternwick, Victoria. His father was a postman whose family had emigrated from Devon, England, to work in the mines during the 1850s gold rush. His mother was also born in the goldfields, at Guildford, before moving to Melbourne with her father, a Crown Lands bailiff. He played for Fitzroy Cricket Club in the 1915–17 season, just one week before his sixteenth birthday. The First World War and the creation of the First Australian Imperial Force led a significant shortage of players available for cricket led to a transfer of players. He made his first-grade debut in 1916–17, and played at the Brunswick Street Oval.
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This page is based on the article Bill Ponsford published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 02, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
