, 8 May, 1869.
"The man I speak of cannot in the world (colony) be simply counterpoised; He proved best man in the field, and for his meed was brow-bound with the oak." - SHAKESPEARE. As the above-named celebrated cricketer has, in a characteristic letter addressed to a contemporary, signified his intention to give up the game, it is due to the readers of The Australasian that he should not be permitted to do so without a sketch or resume of his career being presented to them. That task, from recent circumstances rather a delicate and distasteful one, has been asigned to me. Certainly no one should be better qualified for it, as I have known Mr. Wills in the old country, and may say have watched him through his whole colonial career. I will try, then, to do justice to one of whom, as a cricketer, it may with truth be asserted that it will be long ere we look upon his like again. Fortunately, I have by me some notes furnished by Mr. Wills himself, so my authority is undoubtedly first hand. Before entering into particulars, I cannot refrain from here calling attention to the fickle nature of everything colonial. A few years ago the fact that the most noted cricketer in all the colonies intended to retire on his laurels, would have been the theme of general conversation, at least amongst cricketers. He would have been feted by our leading club, and other clubs would also have joined in a parting demonstration of esteem. Testimonials, so cheap and easily got up now-a-days, would have been presented by the dozen, and most probably some more valuable souvenir of public regard would have accompanied them. But how different is the reality. Before this article is read, I daresay Tommy Wills will be quite, or almost, forgotten. No doubt, recent circumstances, to which I need not more fully now allude, have a good deal to do with this public apathy; still, I am sure that with the general public no one could have been a greater favourite than Mr. Wills, and on reviewing his career, it must be owned that to him in a very great measure is the colony indebted for that cricketing supremacy she has so long enjoyed. Possibly the colony does not now value it as it once did, and at any rate it only bears out the old saying, that a man who studies the public good, or any one else's good, before himself is a fool for his pains. But there was a time when things were very different; and whoever remembers Melbourne eight or ten years ago, and from a cricket point of view, contrasts it then with what is now, may well be astonished at the change. I wish I could say of Mr. Wills's career that nothing became him so well as the close of it. In the position he filled, undoubtedly, he committed a very grave error in his refusal to play, except as captain, in the late Intercolonial Match. As a gentleman in England, a man can do this kind of thing; and he can, moreover, walk off the field if he likes, and no one can question his acts, although they may his good taste; but when a man accepts public pay, as all the eleven here did, to represent the colony, the case is different, and it is then incumbent on him to bow to the will of the eleven, and in any capacity to play and do his best. It was Mr. Wills's misfortune, but still entirely one of his own making, that he was so circumstanced that he could not assume a right to which, as a gentleman cricketer of the colony and of England, he would have been fully entitled. I have never heard any one dispute that, as far as ability and fitness for the post of captain, he was facile princeps. Having thus got rid of a disagreeable subject, and for ever, I trust, let me state that my first remembrance of Tommy Wills was in a match at Kennington Oval, where we were on opposite sides. He was pointed out to me as "that young fellow from Rugby, who plays with a 4lb. bat, and hits terrific." I forget which of the professionals it was who thus described Tommy Wills. He played for Kent, and I did not then know he was Victorian born, and little I anticipated that he and I would play together in the Sydney Domain, or that I should be writing this resume of his career. He was after my time at Cambridge, and I was just giving up cricket when he came on the scene; and, after the above mentioned match I never met him again until we shook hands in the pavilion on the M.C.C. ground. He had just arrived, in the same steamer with Sir Henry Barkly, in time to play in a trial match, and, of course, was selected to go to Sydney.