Martin Donnelly

Who is the greatest Oxford cricketer of all time? Perhaps Colin Cowdrey with his 114 Test caps; or the younger Nawab of Pataudi whose career was blighted by the loss of an eye in a car crash on the eve of the 1961 Varsity match; or perhaps more recently Imran Khan, Pakistan captain and World Cup winner. However, John Woodcock, long-serving cricket correspondent for The Times, who came up to Oxford in 1945, was adamant that the greatest Oxford cricketer was one that he watched in The Parks all through those post-war summers of 1946 and 1947 – the New Zealand left-handed batsman, Martin Donnelly.

Martin Donnelly played all three Tests for New Zealand as a nineteen-year-old in the side that came on tour to England in 1937. His career was then put on hold by the war, in which he served and fought in North Africa and Italy as a tank commander with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, reaching the rank of Major. He scored a dazzling 133 for the Dominions against England at Lord’s in 1945 before coming up to Worcester College later that year to read history on a two-year postwar course. In his two years for Oxford, he made 2400 runs at an average of 65.4, including six centuries in 1946 and another three in 1947, when he captained the side and was named as one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year. In the winter he played rugby for Oxford and won an England cap in 1947.

It was said by John Woodcock that when word went round that Donnelly was batting in The Parks, lecture halls emptied quickly, and the crowd could be three or four deep round the boundary. In 1946, in two matches when Oxford had the better of a draw with the Indians and beat Lancashire, Donnelly’s scores were 61, 116 not out, 139 and 95. In the Varsity match of that year he made 142 out of a total of 261 as Oxford won by 6 wickets. In 1947 Oxford beat Middlesex, Worcestershire, Sussex and Leicestershire and had much the better of a draw with Cambridge, Donnelly making 81 in his only innings.

In 1949 he returned to England with the New Zealand touring team, when Oxford remarkably became the only side to beat them, Donnelly being cheered in The Parks by a vast crowd all the way to the wicket. In the Lord’s Test that year he made a brilliant 206, as New Zealand remained unbeaten in four drawn Tests against England. It was to be his last Test series as he retired from cricket in 1950 to take a job in industry in Australia. Wisden remarked on this loss by saying that he entranced cricket followers in the immediate post-war years in a manner surpassed only by Denis Compton.

Martin Donnelly only played seven Tests, his batting average 52, but he was a victim of the war, the lowly status at the time of New Zealand as a Test-playing country and the need to earn a living outside the poorly paid world of cricket. When he died in 1999, Wisden recorded that ‘he had certain similarities with Bradman, the build, the hawk-eye, the determination to establish a psychological supremacy over the bowler as soon as possible’. In those immediate post-war years English cricket-lovers, especially those who rushed to The Parks to watch him bat, were indeed privileged.

David Walsh

New Zealand 1949, when Oxford was the only side to beat the touring team. Martin Donnelly kneeling front left.

Martin Donnelly

Martin Donnelly batting.