Alec Bannerman was born at Paddington, Sydney, on 21 March 1854, eight years after his elder brother Charles. He was small (around 5 ft 4 in), wiry and intensely serious about the technical side of batting. He made his Test debut at Melbourne in January 1879, taking the place his brother had once filled, and remained an Australian opener for 14 years across nine tours and series.
There was no resemblance between the brothers' styles. Charles had hit the first ball ever bowled in a Test for runs and had made the inaugural Test century (165 retired hurt in March 1877). Alec, by contrast, blocked, padded, left and accumulated. He scored at less than 30 runs an hour for almost his entire Test career; in one famous innings against England at Sydney in 1891-92, he scored 91 in seven hours.
The statistics: 28 Tests, 1,108 runs at 23.03, no centuries, six fifties, top score 94. He made six centuries in first-class cricket and four of those came on tour in England. In the inaugural England-Australia Test on English soil — at the Oval in 1880 — Alec opened in his brother's absence and is often credited with scoring the first Test run made on English ground.
Bannerman's fielding was excellent, particularly at point, where he was rated alongside the best of his era. He toured England in 1880, 1882, 1884, 1886, 1888 and 1893 — six tours, a 19th-century Australian record matched only by Murdoch and Blackham.
After retiring he became a coach with the New South Wales Cricket Association and a respected umpire. He died at Sydney in 1924, the last survivor of the Australian XI that won the Oval Test in 1882.