Duminy Jacobus Image 1 Transvaal 1929

Description

Bellville, Cape Province born all-rounder Jacobus Duminy was a left-handed middle order batsman and slow left-arm orthodox spin bowler. His cricket career was episodic: his first two first class matches were in 1919-20, he played one in 1921, and then a few more in 1927-28 and 1928-29, followed by three further games under unusual circumstances in 1929. He was not successful in his two appearances for Western Province against the Australian Forces team in 1919-20, and made 0 and 2 in his only first class match for Oxford University in 1921, when he was a Rhodes scholar; he did, however, win a “Harlequin” cap as a member of the University second cricket team.

Duminy re-appeared in first class cricket in the 1927-28 South African season, playing for Transvaal in two matches against the M.C.C. touring team. In the first, he made an unbeaten 95, and in the second he scored 55 and was then not out for 74 when the match was left drawn. That led to his selection for South Africa for the First Test of a five-match series at Johannesburg in December 1927, though he was not successful with the bat, scoring 0 and 4 in the match, but his left-arm spin, used as the sixth bowler in the South African attack, broke up a second wicket partnership of 230 between Herbert Sutcliffe and Ernest Tyldesley which took England’s first innings total past South Africa’s with only one wicket down, accounting for Tyldesley leg before. Duminy did not play in the Second or Third Tests, but when the tour returned to Johannesburg in late January, he was picked for the Fourth Test, although he had played no first class cricket in the meantime: the move was again unsuccessful, and he scored just 7 and 5.

In 1928-29, the Currie Cup was not contested, but Duminy appeared in three first class matches for Transvaal. In the third of these, against Border, he made the only century of his first class career, an unbeaten 168, and took six wickets in a single innings for 40 runs, half his career total of wickets. That was his final first class game in South Africa.

The codicil to his career was an odd one. He was not picked for the 1929 tour of England, but in the summer of 1929 was on holiday in Switzerland. The contemporary Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack’s obituary of Duminy in 1981 says “he was holidaying in Switzerland when he was sent for to join a team beset with injuries”. He was conscripted straight into the Test team for the Third Test of a five match series at Headingley, and once again, he was not a success, scoring 2 and 12. He stayed with the South African team for the next two first class matches after the Test, but then departed, and did not play first class cricket again.

In 13 first class matches he averaged 29.31 with the bat, with three half centuries in addition to his only hundred. His twelve wickets cost 30.66 apiece and he held 11 catches in those games.

A successful academic in later life, he resolutely opposed apartheid, sometimes at personal risk. He also helped established multi-racial cricket weeks for boys and girls.

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