ONE OF CRICKET publishing's crimes of the century was perpetrated in a 1987 book on allrounders. In it, Jack Gregory was accorded a mere five lines. It was sometimes said of Keith Miller in the 1940s and'50s he was another Gregory, which should give some idea of power and charisma of Jack Morrison Gregory during the allegedly carefree 1920s.

Bareheaded, tall, tanned and strong, he was one of the paramount Australian favourites of his time, galloping in to bowl fast and sometimes short, or pocketing all kinds of slips catches, or cracking boundaries galore, a left-hander in this mode, often foolhardily without batting gloves. Gregory still heads the list of Fastest Test Centuries in terms of minutes at the crease. At the old Wanderers ground, Johannesburg in November 1921, on the way home from the barnstorming tour of England, he raced to this half-century in 35 minutes and his hundred in 70, mostly off slow bowling. If that is to be beaten, with modern over rates around 15 per hour, somebody will have to score at six runs an over for 17 overs.

Withal, his niche in history was carved by his bowling, for he was not only the most feared fast bowler of the early 1920s, but his partnership with Tasmanian Ted McDonald was the first truly formidable `pair' in the saga of fast bowling. The smooth McDonald, with his sallow, threatening features and silky approach and delivery, allowed no sense of escape for a batsman whose single had got him away from Gregory's attention. The nearest parallel in the modern game might have been Croft and Holding.

Not that Gregory was ungainly like Croft. He bounded in with big strides, made a kangaroo leap, fairly side-on, and banged the ball down. We are fortunate that film survives.

Those who wished to justify Bodyline in 1932–33 sometimes implied that it was the same sort of belligerent bowling that Gregory had unleashed, and Cotter and Jones before him. But these men employed the bouncer – or `bumper' as it was then known – must less frequently, and never with the concentrated leg-side field.

It could never be pretended, of course, that Jack Gregory seldom inflicted injury. On the 1921 tour of England he kept the hospital outpatients departments busy attending to a succession of batsmen with contused flesh and broken bones, most notably Ernest Tyldesley, who was bowled off his face in the Trent Bridge Test. Young men in the 1990s doubtless will laugh at the fools of so long ago for not wearing helmets and grilles and arm-guards – and as with the swashbuckling Gregory, batting-gloves too.

 Gregory fought in the First World War, having played only lower-grade cricket in Sydney. Shipped across to England from his artillery unit in France, he was spotted by Plum Warner, who made a fuss of him because he was a cousin of Syd `Tich' Gregory, who had played an amazing total of 58 Tests for Australia. Jack was more of a batsman at this time, but during the Australian Imperial Forces' matches around England and then Australia in 1919, he revealed himself to be a potentially world-class allrounder, just as Keith Miller did 26 years later with the Australian Services XI.

Far from being exhausted after the demanding tour of England, Gregory showed his home crowds that the news from England had not been exaggerated. When the AIF played Victoria he took 7 for 22, and made runs, and against his own State, NSW, he scored 122 and 102 and took eight wickets.

The index for assessing allrounders (with a consistency, incidentally, era against era) is widely accepted as division of batting average by bowling average. A product of 1.00 suggests adequacy. Anything higher indicates exceptional worth. During 1920–21, Jack Gregory averaged 60.29 for his 844 runs and 22.37 for his 43 wickets. The one divided by the other gives a heavyweight index figure of 2.7

But one should not have to resurrect the reputation of a cricketer like Gregory with statistics. He had such presence on the field, such dominance over opponents, and such a flair for meeting his side's needs as they arose. A focus on his allround efforts against England in the five Tests – all won by Australia– of 1920–21 will show just how big an oversight it was to reduce him to a humiliating five lines in that 1987 book.

Against an England side whose average age was 35 but which contained such names as Hobbs, Woolley, Hendren, Hearne, Rhodes, Fender, Douglas and Parkin, Jack Gregory averaged 73.67 with the bat and took 23 wickets at 24.17, holding 15 catches along the way. In the second Test, at Melbourne, he thundered to 100 from the No. 9 position and then took 7 for 69. Successive innings in the third and fourth Tests brought him 78 not out, 77 and 76 not out, followed immediately by 93 at Sydney as Australia wrapped up a 5–0 triumph under their abrasive, overweight leader Warwick Armstrong.

There were times in that first post-war series when, in Percy Fender's words, Gregory hit batsmen `everywhere from knuckles to neck', and in the third Test Woolley, turning away, was hit shudderingly on the spine, which deeply upset him and the batsmen who followed. Gregory was truly a holy terror with ball as well as bat.

And all without batting-gloves: Gregory, Test record-holder

In the first three Tests in England in 1921, he took another 17 wickets as Australia stretched their winning sequence to eight Tests within seven months. Those large hands held another seven catches too. But in 1922 he had a knee cartilage removed, an operation which in those days was anything but routine. He played on but was never quite the same force in the 1924–25 and 1926 Ashes series. Then, in the first Test of 1928–29, at Brisbane's Exhibition Ground, young Bradman made his Test debut, England won by 675 runs, and Jack Gregory's knee went for the last time. He had given his all (3 for 142 – Sutcliffe, Hammond and Chapman– off 41 six-ball overs), and he was inconsolable in the dressing-room.

There are not many Jack Gregory anecdotes lodged in the pages of cricket's vast literature, mainly because he refused to give interviews after being deceived by a newspaperman in 1926. Cornered in the pavilion, Gregory had responded to the question `Why hasn't Kelleway been selected for the England tour?' with the throwaway remark `Blowed if I know!' Next day, the paper ran a piece along the lines that Gregory could not understand how they could have left Kelleway out. That was it. No more interviews, formal or semi-formal.

Jack Gregory the last photograph?

That, then, was the challenge I set myself in 1972. We had corresponded, friendly fashion, but there was no chance of an interview. So on the spur of the moment I got the old Holden going one morning and drove non-stop down the coast to where he lived, a mere 200-odd miles away. Had I stopped for petrol I would have missed him.

 Jack Gregory was about to descend the wooden steps from his little house on stilts. He fished or played bowls every day. Today it was probably to be bad luck for a few local bream and flathead. The tall, slow-moving figure of the 76-year-old former sporting god stopped and eyed me quizzically. I had taken some books for him to sign, and that meant going back into the kitchen. Once inside, we both became fascinated by the television pictures of President Nixon stepping off the aircraft in China, and conversation about that and cricket moved from a hesitant few introductory exchanges into a full flow. Had I dared to produce a pencil and paper I would have been ushered down those steps at disconcerting speed. The `chat' had to be strictly informal, so I retained all that he said – or most of it – ringing inside my skull until I later sat on the local beach and `transcribed' it onto a notepad.

First, there was that overpowering smell of liniment. That knee. `It's like a barometer,' he lamented. `I had to put some of that stuff on. It's going to rain soon.'

 Melbourne, January 1925: Gregory bursts through Patsy Hendren's defence, and Australia are about to go two-up in the Ashes series. The other England batsman is Herbert Sutcliffe, who scored 176 and 127 in the match

He said his record fastest Test century came in 75 minutes, and took the news calmly that it was even better than that: 70 minutes. When told that Frank Woolley, who made those wonderful nineties against him in the 1921 Lord's Test, had recently married again at the age of 84, he murmured `Companionship'. His own wife, a former Miss Australia, had died nine years before.

He was keen on one-day cricket: `By Jove, I like that 50-overs stuff. They have to get on with it. I liked to hit hard myself, because I loved the game and I tried to amuse the public.' What about the restriction on bowlers' run-ups? `That would've suited me. I took 12 paces: 15 yards.'

Otherwise, he was completely unsentimental. There were no trophies, no books, no bats and balls. He seldom went up to Sydney for the Tests, though he remained a member of the SCG Trust. He did, though, have some ancestral papers, and one of his sisters was now 98. The Gregorys remain cricket's mightiest clan.

Last year he had attended the old players' reunion, and ran into chaps like Grimmett, Pellew and Whitty: `Hadn't seen many of them for donkey's years.' But he was quite content, it seemed, here by the Wadonga River. He recalled how `we finished Tests in two or three days' in the flapper 1920s. And with that pervasive touch of impatience he finally broke my defences. I truly felt I was inconveniencing him now, so as Richard Nixon disappeared from the screen to sample Mao Tse-tung's hospitality, I let my old champion go off to his little boat.

He died the following year. I had managed to take what was probably the last photograph of him, of that unusually small head, as he stood atop the steps. And, though he didn't know it, I had managed the first interview for nearly half-a-century, and the last ever. It was easier than bowling to him must have been, or facing his thunderbolts bareheaded.

OVER 100 centuries lay ahead, 16 of them in eight matches, a world record

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