Jack Rutherford

Who is Jack Rutherford?

John Walter Rutherford is an Australian cricketer who played in one Test in 1956-57. Although Ernest Bromley was the first Western Australian to play test cricket, Rutherford was the first Western Australia cricketer to be picked for a "major" cricket tour and the first to win a Test cap for Australia while playing for his native state.

A science and mathematics graduate from the University of Western Australia, Jack Rutherford was a right-handed opening batsman, inclined to be defensive, and an occasional leg-break bowler who played for Western Australia from the 1952-53 season. Until 1956-57, Western Australia played the other Sheffield Shield state cricket teams only once a season, so Rutherford's record of five first-class centuries in his first four seasons was notable enough to win him selection for the 1956 Australian tour to England. In a damp summer, though, he was not a success, scoring only 640 runs at an average of fewer than 23 runs per innings. Only fleetingly, early in the tour, did he look likely to break into the Test team: against MCC at Lord's, he scored a dour 98 and shared a second wicket partnership of 282 with Neil Harvey, who scored 225. But when the team was announced for the first Test, the Australians reverted to the first-choice opening pair of Colin McDonald and Jim Burke.