OTD | Warren Bardsley became the first player to score a century in each innings of a Test match

Warren Bardsley is one of the best Australian players of his time. He started playing in the year 1909 and played 41 Test matches in 1909 and 1926. Moreover, he played over 200 first-class games for New South Wales and was also the Wisden’s Cricketer of the Year in 1910. At that time, winning the Cricketer of the Year was a prestigious thing and he was lucky to win it. He was a hard-working player and played some great innings throughout his career. 

One of the most magnificent feats he earned was becoming the first player to score a century in each innings of a Test match. His first eight innings after making a debut wasn’t so good and he struggled a lot in scoring runs in the red-ball. He just scored 2, 6, 46, 0, 30, 2, 9 and 35 in the first eight innings. But in the 5th Test match at The Oval, London, he scored two back-to-back centuries in a single Test match and after that, he didn’t stop scoring runs. 

The Test series against South Africa was one of his best series in 1911 where he scored 573 runs at 63.67 in nine innings. After that, due to World War 1, Bardsley couldn’t play cricket for five long years and when he made his comeback, he was old enough and couldn’t score runs. However, he continued playing in the domestic set-up and scored with an average of high-30s – low-40s for New South Wales throughout much of the early-1920s. He played his last Test match in 1926.

Read More: The first double century stand in Test cricket was completed, at The Oval in 1884