George John Bonnor was born in Bathurst, NSW, in 1855. By his twenties he was 6 ft 6 in tall and weighed 108 kg, with golden hair and a flowing beard that earned him the press tag 'a reincarnation of the Viking gods'. He was, with Spofforth and Murdoch, one of the headline names of the 1880, 1882, 1884, 1886 and 1888 Australian tours of England.
In the famous September 1880 Oval Test he was caught by GF Grace 115 yards from the bat off Alfred Shaw — a hit so high that the batters had completed three runs and were going for a fourth when Grace took it. The catch (now part of cricket folklore) is sometimes called the most famous deep field catch in history; the hit itself, equally extraordinary, is less often celebrated.
In an inter-colonial match in Melbourne, he is supposed to have hit a six measured at 164 yards out of the ground over the pavilion. In another, he allegedly smashed the pavilion clock with a straight drive. In a Scarborough Festival match in 1882 he hit 20 runs off four balls of one over.
His throwing arm was as legendary as his hitting. He could regularly throw a cricket ball 120 yards on the full from the boundary; one demonstration at the MCG was reportedly measured at 131 yards. His Test record (17 Tests, 512 runs at 17.06) doesn't capture his impact: he was a crowd-puller in an era when batting was technical and grim.
Bonnor died in 1912 in Sydney, a relatively forgotten figure by then. His story is sometimes told as cricket's first Beefy Botham — power-hitting freak in an era of careful accumulation.