Ron Hamence

Ronald Arthur Hamence (25 November 1915 – 24 March 2010) was a cricketer who played for South Australia and Australia.

A short and compact right-handed batsman, Hamence excelled in getting forward to drive and had an array of attractive back foot strokes.

At 15 years and 25 days, Hamence became the youngest district cricketer in South Australian cricket history when he made his debut for Adelaide club West Torrens in 1930.

While playing with the SA team, he worked as a public servant at the Government Printing Office.

He was a compact batsman preferring attack over defence, however he suffered a weakness throughout his career against fast bowling.

He played 99 first-class matches from 1935 until 1951, which brought him a career total of 5,285 runs that came at an average of 37.75 runs per innings and included 11 centuries.

He scored two of these centuries in his first and last first-class matches.

Born in the Adelaide suburb of Hindmarsh, Hamence was the cousin of Charlie Walker, a fellow Australian cricketer.

He joined South Australia part way through the 1935–36 season, and in March 1936, he scored a century (121) on his first-class cricket debut against Tasmania at the Adelaide Oval.

This was to be his only match of the season, which left him with a debut season average of 121.00.

At the start of his first full season, he followed this up with scores of 16 and four against the touring England team and Victoria and seven and 19 against New South Wales.

On Christmas Day, 1936, however, he scored his second first-class century, 104 against Queensland in the first innings.

He would go on to score 52 in the second.

Scores of three not out, 28, 27, 35 and four followed before his next significant score, 52, against Queensland on 12 February 1937.

He ended the season with 336 runs, one century, and an average of 30.54.

He then suffered his worst period of form thus far at the start of the 1937–38 season, failing to reach double figures from 17 December 1937 until early January 1938, when he scored 64 in the second innings, against Victoria.

He followed this with 49 against New South Wales, and ended his third season with 283 runs at an average of 21.76.

He did not play another cricket match until 16 December 1938 at the start of the next season, however he returned with a score of 90 against New South Wales, and followed that up two matches later with 84 against Victoria.

He narrowly missed out on his third century in November 1939 when he was caught by Morris Sievers for 99 against Victoria.

He scored 41, 12, 6 and 20 to see out the rest of the year, ending with 239 runs at an average of 47.80, his most successful full season thus far.

In 1940, he began the year with 26 and two against Queensland, and then a 43 against New South Wales.

A series of low scores followed until he hit a vein of strong form beginning in February of that year.

He scored 63 against Western Australia on 16 February 1940 in his last match of the 1939–40 season.

He began the following season with 41 in the following match against New South Wales.

Hamence then enjoyed great success against Victoria, where he scored 130 and 103 not out in one inter-state match, and then 85 and 62 in the next.

Following this, in a match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground between two representative selections to raise money for the war effort, he played for Don Bradman's XI and scored 73 and 35.

He returned to play for South Australia for a match against New South Wales, where he scored 31 and five.

He ended the 1940–41 season with the highest average for a single season he would achieve in his career, 569 runs at 63.22, with two hundreds.

Hamence was not to play another first-class match until December 1945 after the end of the Second World War.

During the war, he served for four years with the Royal Australian Air Force.

Upon his return, he immediately hit form for South Australia against New South Wales where he hit 74 not out and 75 in a match starting 14 December 1945.

He then scored 56 against Victoria on 18 January, and then after three single figure scores he hit 76 against Queensland.

He then experienced a drop in form, with only one significant score, 46 against Wellington, for seven innings.

He ended the 1945–46 season with 332 runs at 36.88.

At the start of the 1946–47 season, however, he enjoyed his greatest success thus far, scoring consecutive centuries in three innings from 15 November 1946 until 19 December: 116 against Victoria and 132 and 101 not out against New South Wales, the latter followed up by a score of 48 in the second innings.

This was followed by a career-best 145 against the touring MCC team on 24 January 1947, and 63 against Queensland on 21 February.

He ended the season with 675 runs at 56.25.

These centuries led to his debut for Australia in the Fifth Test at Sydney on 28 February 1947.

While Hamence only played three Test matches for his national team, he had a successful domestic career, being called South Australia's most successful batsman in 1950.

Already the youngest Australian to play district cricket, he was also, from the death of Bill Brown in 2008 until his own death in 2010, the oldest surviving Australian Test cricketer.