Ferris John Image 2 Gloucestershire 1895

Description

Sydney, New South Wales born John “J.J.” Ferris was a deadly left-arm swing bowler who played Test cricket for both Australia and England.

Ferris made his first class debut for New South Wales against Alfred Shaw’s touring English team on his home ground in 1886-87. He took seven wickets in the match, including five in the second innings, and after several more good displays was selected for the first Test match, also at Sydney in January 1887. The England first innings was a disaster as they collapsed to what remains their lowest Test total of 45 all out, Ferris bowling unchanged with Charlie Turner, but despite his nine wickets in the match, England, inspired by Billy Barnes’ second innings 6-28, scraped to a 13 run win.

Ferris took another nine wicket haul in the second Test, but again England were victorious, though in the only Test of the 1887-88 tour he could manage “only” six wickets as the Englishmen came out on top yet again. He went with the Australians to England in 1888, and at Lord’s for the first time in his career playing in a winning Test side, his partnership with Turner accounted for no less than 18 England wickets as Australia recorded a 61 run win. The Ashes remained in England, however, as the home side won the other two Tests. In 1889 Ferris was named as one of the first Wisden Cricketers of the Year.

He went to England again in 1890, taking 13 wickets in another series defeat and no less than 186 in the season as a whole, but then moved there permanently, playing a single Test for his adopted country against South Africa at Cape Town in March 1892. Coincidentally, his former Australian teammate Billy Murdoch also made his first England appearance in this match, which was not given Test status until some time later. Ferris took 13 for 91 in the match (he took 263 wickets on the tour), Ferris’ performance helping to crush the home side by an innings and 189 runs, but it was to prove his final international appearance. He had taken 61 Test wickets at an average of just 12.70; only George Lohmann had a better career average.

A left-handed batsman, Ferris played several seasons of County cricket with Gloucestershire, making his debut in 1892, for whom he scored his only hundred in 1893, making 106, but was otherwise less than successful, playing his last match for them in 1895. At the end of his career, he appeared in a single Sheffield Shield match for South Australia in 1895-96, opening the batting but making nought, then finally in 1897-98 in two more games for New South Wales. In his last match, he made a half century but did not bowl a single ball.

In 198 first class matches, he scored 4,264 runs at an average of 15.67, including a single hundred and 15 half centuries. He took 812 wickets at 17.54 a piece, with a best performance of 8-41, taking ten wickets in a match on 11 occasions and taking five wickets in an innings on 63 occasions, 6 of which were in Test matches. He also took 91 catches in his first class career.

Ferris enlisted in the British Army for the Second Boer War, but contracted typhoid and died at Durban, South Africa in November 1900 at the age of 33.