Jim Burke (cricketer)

[2][3] Burke was a talented golfer and cricketer in his childhood, but was refused membership of Balgowlah Golf Club at the age of 12 on the grounds that he was too young.This included an opportunity in the Test trial match between the strongest players in Australia at the end of the season, as part of Hassett's XI.[4] Burke was selected for an Australian Second XI that toured New Zealand under the leadership of Bill Brown at the end of the season, with the first-choice team still in South Africa.[4] The following season, the Test players returned and Burke put in a series a consistent performances to cement his New South Wales position and push for national selection.[6] Burke then scored half-centuries in consecutive Shield matches and was selected for an Australian XI to play against England in a Test trial.After scoring 32 against Queensland, and 11 and 38 not out for New South Wales against the touring West Indies, Burke was made twelfth man for the first two Tests.[3][4] He returned to New South Wales and scored fifties in consecutive matches late in the summer; he ended the season with 319 runs at 29.00 and took five wickets at 45.60.[5] He lost his New South Wales place multiple times, playing in only five matches as his state won the 1953–54 Sheffield Shield, starting a run of nine successive titles.[4][7] Early in the season, Burke took 6/60 in the second innings of a match against South Australia, removing Gavin Stevens and Phil Ridings before running through the tail,[6] helping to set up an eight-wicket triumph.[4] Burke made his come-back by combining business and cricket, moving to England for a season as Todmorden's professional in the Lancashire League in 1954.At this stage, he began to take a defensive attitude, trying to eliminate all risk in order to increase his productivity, something that prompted crowd heckling and demonstrations by Sydneysiders when he walked into bat.[4] In his third game of the summer, he made a defensive 189 against Western Australia in Perth, prompting Don Bradman to advise him to utilize more strokeplay.[4] Towards the end of January, he hit 98 and was unbeaten on 57 as New South Wales slumped to 7/121 and avoided a defeat to Victoria when time ran out, helping his state take a third consecutive Shield title.[4] Burke's increased strokeplay during the season endeared himself more to the public, and his volume of scoring earned him a place in the Australian squad for the 1956 tour of England.In a low-scoring series in a wet summer with spinning pitches which saw England's off spinner Jim Laker, dominate, Burke topped the Test match averages, as well as Australia's first-class aggregate with 1,339 runs in 37 innings.[4] His tour was highlighted by his second innings of 58 not out in the First Test at Trent Bridge in Nottingham, defying the English bowlers for four hours to force a draw on a rain-affected pitch; more than half the playing time was lost to the weather.[3][4] In Australia's inaugural Test against Pakistan in Karachi, Burke made 4 and 10, dismissed both times by Fazal Mahmood as the tourists fell to a nine-wicket defeat.[2] The match ended in a draw and Burke struggled again in the deciding Test in Calcutta, falling both times to the spin of Ghulam Ahmed for 10 and 2 on a pitch affected by flooding.[4] Burke struggled in the First Test, scoring 16 and 10 retired hurt as South Africa held the upper hand for most of the drawn match.After adding a half-century in the following match against Western Australia, he compiled 104 against the touring England team for New South Wales ahead of the Tests.After Australia had made 186 to take a 52-run lead,[4] English all-rounder Trevor Bailey, notorious for his defensive batting, took 357 minutes to compile the slowest half-century in first-class history.[4] In the second innings of the Test, Burke took 2/26 including the wicket of English captain Peter May for 92,[4][6] and he was frequently accused by the touring journalists of throwing.[4][6] In the Fourth Test, Burke made 66 in the first innings to help set up a lead of 236 and he was unbeaten on 16 as the Australians sealed the series with a ten-wicket win.He then made five in his final match against Western Australia, which New South Wales won by an innings and completed their sixth consecutive Sheffield Shield title.Outside the pressure of Test cricket, Burke was an entertaining and attacking batsman, characterised by a clean line, quick movement back or forward and good balance, notably in playing the on-drive.He played square-on while on the back foot, with chest facing the bowler, preferring to have his body behind swinging balls rather than the textbook side-on stance.Lantern jawed and poker faced, Burke showed little overt reaction to crowd sentiment over his batting approach, tugging his cap lower before every delivery.In February 1979, depressed by marital problems, ill health and by the loss of some $153,000 in a 'disastrous gamble on the gold futures market', he purchased a shotgun from a Sydney sporting goods store and killed himself with it.