Aubrey Faulkner — South Africa's Greatest All-rounder, Peak 1909-11

South Africa had been promoted to Test status in 1889, but won only one Test in their first 17 years. The development of a googly attack — Schwarz, Vogler, White and Faulkner — transformed the side between 1905 and 1907. Faulkner was both the youngest of the four and the only one capable of high-quality batting.

The 1909-10 series at home was played on matting wickets at Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. The googly attack flourished in those conditions; Faulkner contributed disproportionately with the bat as well as 29 wickets.

By the time the 1910-11 tour to Australia was announced, Faulkner — already 28 — was the team's senior batsman. Wisden noted him as the only South African likely to flourish on Australian turf wickets, where the matting tactics of home would not apply.

Faulkner was born in Port Elizabeth in December 1881 and learnt the googly directly from Reggie Schwarz, who in turn had learnt it from Bosanquet at Middlesex. He made his Test debut in 1906 in South Africa's home series against England (the series in which South Africa won their first Test, at Johannesburg) and quickly became the team's most-rounded cricketer.

His peak ran across two southern-hemisphere seasons. In 1909-10 at home v Henry Leveson-Gower's England team, Faulkner topped the run aggregate for either side with 545 at 60.55, including 123 at Johannesburg, and was second-leading wicket-taker with 29 at 21.89. South Africa won the series 3-2 — the first home Test series South Africa had ever won. Wisden the following spring called him 'the best all-round cricketer in the world'.

In 1910-11 South Africa toured Australia for the first time, losing the five-Test series 4-1; but Faulkner made 732 runs at 73.20 in the Tests, including 204 at Melbourne (the highest South African Test score to that point), 56 and 115 at Adelaide, and four other fifties. Australia's bowlers, led by Cotter and Hordern, broke the rest of the side; Faulkner alone resisted.

Later highlights: in 1921 he made 153 against Warwick Armstrong's near-invincible Australians playing for an Archie MacLaren XI at Eastbourne, helping to inflict the tourists' only defeat of the summer. Test record: 25 matches, 1,754 runs at 40.79 with four hundreds, 82 wickets at 26.58.

“Faulkner was the best all-rounder I ever saw.”

“A genius of cricket, the best all-round player South Africa has produced.”

Faulkner served in the Royal Field Artillery and Imperial Camel Corps in the First World War, winning the DSO and the Order of the Nile. He played his last Test in 1924, by which time he was running the Faulkner School of Cricket in Walham Green, London, the first specialist cricket coaching school of its kind. He coached Bill Bowes, Ian Peebles, Bob Wyatt and others.

On 10 September 1930, suffering from depression and the lingering effects of war, Faulkner gassed himself in his school office. He was 48.