Hugh Trumble's Final Test — Hat-trick at Melbourne, 1904

Trumble had been Australia's premier bowler since the early 1890s. A tall (6 ft 5 in) off-spinner with a high action, he relied on flight, length and the late drift the matting wickets at home and the wet wickets in England both gave him. His first hat-trick had come at Melbourne in January 1902 against the same opposition (Bobby Abel, John Gunn, Archie MacLaren).

By March 1904 he was 36 and had already announced retirement. His banking career and family obligations had taken precedence; only the urging of Joe Darling and Monty Noble persuaded him to play the home Ashes.

Australia had lost the first Test (Foster's 287), the second (Bosanquet), and the fourth (Bosanquet 6/51). The fifth Test at Melbourne was a dead rubber for the series but a live one for Trumble's farewell.

Hugh Trumble's Test career had been extraordinary — 141 wickets at 21.78 across 32 matches between 1890 and 1904 — and he had announced his retirement before the 1903-04 series began. He came out of his planned retirement at the urging of teammates and the Australian board to play the home Ashes.

The series was lost (England won 3-2 thanks to Foster, Bosanquet and Hirst) but Trumble's last Test, the fifth at Melbourne in March 1904, was his finest. England, batting first, made 247. Australia replied with 247. England in the second innings collapsed to 101 all out, with Trumble taking 7 for 28 in 21 overs. The middle of his spell included a hat-trick: Bernard Bosanquet caught at slip, Plum Warner caught behind, and Dick Lilley bowled. It was Trumble's second Test hat-trick (he had taken one against England at the same ground in January 1902).

Australia knocked off the 102 required for a 218-run win. The match concluded Trumble's Test career and confirmed his place as the leading wicket-taker in Test history at the time of his retirement — a record he held until Sydney Barnes passed it in 1913. Trumble retired to his banking career with the National Bank of Australasia, became long-serving secretary of the Melbourne Cricket Club, and died in 1938.

“The most dramatic and memorable farewell performance ever by a bowler.”

Trumble's record of 141 Test wickets stood as the world record until Sydney Barnes passed it in 1913. He continued to live in Melbourne, working at the National Bank and (from 1911) as secretary of the MCC, the powerful Melbourne Cricket Club. He died in 1938 aged 70.

The hat-trick is one of only four pairs of Test hat-tricks taken by the same bowler (with TJ Matthews, Jimmy Matthews having two in the same Test in 1912). In 1904 Trumble was the first to do it in any form.