1877 Birth of the best Australian batsman before Bradman. With his natural hand-eye co-ordination Victor Trumper was elegance personified. He was no fair-weather performer – his best innings came when the chips were down: 104 on an Old Trafford sticky in 1902, 74 (out of 122) against England in Melbourne in 1903-04, and 159 on the same ground to set up a famous victory over South Africa seven years later. It was this as much as mere statistics (he averaged 39 from 48 Tests) that signified Trumper’s genius. He was very popular too, and when he died of Bright’s Disease at the age of 37, 250,000 attended his funeral.
