Sid Pegler

Who was Sid Pegler?

Sidney James Pegler was a South African cricketer. He emerged following the decline of their googly bowlers Vogler and Schwarz in the early 1910s.

Although Pegler only played a few first-class matches in South Africa between 1908 and 1910, he was chosen for South Africa's first Test tour of 1910/1911 and immediately established himself as a Test regular, although the extremely hard Australian wickets were as difficult for him as they were for the much-acclaimed "googly" trio of Vogler, Schwarz and Aubrey Faulkner. Despite taking only seven wickets in the Test series, it was no surprise when Pegler was chosen for the 1912 "Triangular Tournament" tour. On this tour, Pegler was a resounding success, playing in all but three of the South Africans' thirty-seven first-class matches and in an extremely wet summer being the leading first-class wicket-taker with 189. He took twenty-nine wickets in the six Tests despite the fact that South Africa only once bowled through two full innings owing to their being outclassed against both England and Australia. Pegler also did fairly well as a slogging tail-end batsman, scoring for the whole tour 643 runs at an average of over fifteen with his best scores being 79 against South Wales at Swansea and 52 against Northamptonshire's strong attack. Pegler also set a record for the fastest first-class fifty during the 1910/1911 tour when he hit 50 in fourteen minutes against Tasmania. Against genuine bowling this has been bettered only by Jim Smith in 1938 and Khalid Mahmood in 2000/2001.