CRICKET-Doug Walters signed bat (images, photos, records, framed)
$695.00
Details
Doug Walters holds a somewhat mythical place in Australian cricket. Small, cheeky, popular and multi-skilled, he would drink all night without getting drunk then wipe sleep from his eyes to make a shot-laden century or take a crucial wicket or stunning catch - sometimes, in folklore at least, on the same day. Sometimes cricket is not even the tale's focus. Michael Clarke, who is often compared to Walters, knows him only as a great bloke instead of a great batsman. It is a shame. He was more than a person whose card games were interrupted by falls of wicket.
Walters, the country boy with the bush technique, was a knockabout who disliked training and going to bed early, and favoured drinking, smoking, solitaire and cribbage. Quick on to the back foot against the spinners, he was a fine straight-driver and hooker, and a valuable partnership breaker with his medium pace. Crowds relaxed and related to his instinctive and aggressive Test batting that three times brought up centuries in a session, the most famous arriving when he smacked the last ball of the day from Bob Willis for six at the WACA in 1974-75. He could play pressure innings as well, like the 112 against West Indies at Port-of-Spain in 1972-93, when Lance Gibbs had three short-legs by 35 minutes on day one and Walters scored 100 between lunch and tea. "By any standards it was a magnificent innings,"
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