Peter John Parnell Burge (17 May 1932 – 5 October 2001) was an Australian cricketer who played in 42 Test matches between 1955 and 1966. After retiring as a player he became a highly respected match referee, overseeing 25 Tests and 63 One Day Internationals.
He was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1965 and in 1997 was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) "for service to cricket as a player, administrator and international referee, and to harness racing."
Early life Burge was born in Kangaroo Point, Queensland, a suburb of the city of Brisbane, into a cricketing family. His father Thomas John "Jack" Burge was a salesman who rose to be a departmental manager of D. & W. Murray, a retail outlet, before becoming a state representative for Nile Industries, a textile firm.Haigh, p. 198. Jack Burge represented Eastern Suburbs in Brisbane's grade cricket competition and later became a cricket administrator. The elder Burge served on the Queensland Cricket Association executive from 1945 until his death in 1957. He also represented Queensland on the Australian Board of Control from 1952 until 1957 and was a state selector from 1944 until 1949.* Peter recalled "My dad was the best frustrated Test cricketer I ever knew. He always wanted to play, was involved in it for as long as I could remember."
Burge was inculcated with a love of cricket by his father, who reputedly gave him a rattle in the shape of a ball and bat when he was a baby. First holding a bat at the age of three, Burge infuriated his mother by striking a ball wrapped in a sock and tied to a rope, for hours on end. Aged five, he went to Buranda Boys' State School and due to his father's coaching, was by far the best cricketer at the school. He played his first competitive match when he was eight and a half, and scored his first century at nine. At the age of nine, Burge scored 223 for Buranda and then decided to retire because of extreme heat. His father berated him for handing the opposition his wicket. Burge said "It was good advice. I never did it again."
In his final year at primary school, playing as an opening batsman and wicketkeeper, he scored a double century, eight centuries, 97 and 0 in 11 innings.
Aged thirteen he moved to Anglican Church Grammar School, one of the state's elite private schools, and represented Queensland in a schoolboy competition in Sydney, scoring 100 against Victoria. He played in the first XI in his final three years and made his first-grade debut in his final year. He remained a wicketkeeper and batted at number three. When he was considered for state selection, his father had to stand aside from the Queensland selection panel. Despite this, Burge's rise through the ranks is continuously accompanied by murmurs of nepotism. He studied chartered accountancy and was selected for the state U-23 side under the coaching of Wally Walmsley.
Shield debut At the time the Queensland wicket-keeper was Test player Don Tallon, member of Bradman's Invincibles, and the reserve was Wally Grout, later to become one of Australia's finest wicket-keepers. Burge decided to give up wicket-keeping and focus purely on batting. Burge progressed to make his Sheffield Shield debut in the Queensland's last match of the 1952–53 season against South Australia. Batting at seven, the first five wickets fell cheaply in each innings, but Burge made a rearguard 54 and 46 respectively. This prevented a defeat.
In the following 1953–54 season, Burge found a regular place and began the season in November with 103 against a New South Wales attack which included Ray Lindwall, Keith Miller and Richie Benaud. After failing to pass single figures in the next match, he scored 64 against South Australia, and then ended the season with 88, 47 and 65. In his first full season, Burge had scored 418 runs at 41.80.
He started the 1954–55 season in a similar fashion to the previous summer, scoring 122 in the opening match of the season against New South Wales. He scored 90 and 41 in the return match, and after making 53 in the next fixture, his steady progress was rewarded in 1954–55 when he was given his Test debut against England at Sydney in the Fifth Test. Australia had lost the series and this allowed selectors to give younger players a chance to show their skills. Unseasonal rain mean that play did not start until 2 p.m. on the fourth day.
Test appearances His first touch of the ball saw him catch Len Hutton at leg slip off the fourth ball of the match. As the players took to the field, Lindwall told him to watch for the fourth ball. Lindwall bowled three outswingers to Hutton, before an inswinger on the fourth. Hutton edged the ball to Burge who claimed the catch on the second attempt. Burge made 17 and 18 not out, as Australia were made to follow on after trailing by 150 runs. Australia were still 32 runs behind and facing a fourth consecutive Test defeat when time ran out. He had scored 379 runs at 42.11 for the season.
He was then selected for the 1955 tour of the West Indies, on which his father acted as manager of the squad. A team meeting was held to officially allow Burge to address his father as "Jack", as the other players did, instead of "dad". In the warm-up match against Jamaica, Burge made 29 and 69 and was selected in the First Test. He scored 14 in the first innings and was not required to bat in the second innings as Australia won by nine wickets. He then made a duck and 2 in the next tour match against Trinidad and was dropped for the remaining four Tests of the series, which Australia took 3–0. Burge's highlight of the tour was an innings of 177 against British Guiana, which set up an innings victory. He ended the first-class matches with 310 runs at 38.75. After the tour, Burge suffered a setback when his father began to develop the heart problems that eventually claimed his life. Nevertheless, the elder Burge insisted that his health not hinder his son's career.
Returning to Australia for the 1955–56 home season, which was purely domestic, Burge played in all but one of Queensland's eight Shield matches. In 12 innings, he made many starts but could not convert them into big scores. He reached 20 on eight occasions and converted four of these into scores between 50 and 65, going no further. He ended with 363 runs at 33.00. In the Test trial match, he played for Lindwall's XI against Johnson's XI and made 72 and 46 in a two-wicket win.
Despite the lack of big scores, Burge was selected for the tour of England in 1956, he made a successful start with a 99 in his first match on English soil against Leicestershire. After making a duck in the next fixture against Yorkshire, he compiled 131 against Nottinghamshire. He then made 61 against Cambridge University.
Despite totalling only 67 runs in the last four innings before the Tests, the retirement of Arthur Morris after the previous West Indies series opened a vacancy in the Australian batting order, and Burge was recalled. In the first three Tests, he could only manage 84 runs at 16.80, and after single figure scores in the Third Test at Headingley, trapped leg before wicket twice by the off spin Jim Laker on a very dry surface as Australia suffered their first innings defeat in 18 years, was dropped for the final two Tests. He was not productive in the tour games outside the Tests after the start of the Ashes series, making only four fifties in 12 innings and he was unable to earn a Test recall during the tour.
On the Test tour of the Indian subcontinent en route back to Australia, Burge was recalled after a defeat in the one-off Test against Pakistan in Karachi, as injuries and illness beset batsmen and all-rounders Ron Archer, Ian Craig and Keith Miller.Benaud, pp. 119–120. He had his first full and consistent Test series. After making 35 in the opening match in Madras, which Australia won by an innings, he made his first half centuries at Test level, scoring 83 and 58 in the Second and Third Tests at Bombay and Calcutta respectively. He compiled 198 runs at 49.50 as Australia took the series 2–0. During the Indian leg of the tour, Burge's father suffered a heart attack, but any prospect of him returning home early was quashed by Jack's strident objections.Haigh, p. 199.
In the 1956–57 Australian season, scored consistently heavily for the first time at first-class level. He opened his campaign with centuries in consecutive matches against Western Australia and Victoria, and failing to convert his starts into large scores in the middle part of the season—he registered seven consecutive scores between 20 and 80—he registered his maiden first-class double century in the final match of the summer, 210 against Victoria, having been dropped first ball. He ended the Australian season with 718 runs at 71.80, despite a personal loss. During the season, Jack Burge suffered a fatal heart attack, forcing his son to retire mid-innings during a national trial match, which doubled as a testimonial for pre-World War II Test players Stan McCabe and Bill O'Reilly.
He toured New Zealand at the season's end and due to his keeping ability, Australia did not send a reserve for Barry Jarman. Burge said "Cricket had been so much a part of Dad's life that I think he would have wanted me to go." He started the tour with a 105 against Canterbury and later made 81 not out against Auckland, but did not otherwise pass 50. New Zealand had Test status at the time, but the Australian Board of Control refused to ratify the matches between the two nations as such. Burge had little impact in three international matches, scoring 115 runs at 28.75 as Australia took the series 1–0. He ended the New Zealand tour with 310 runs at 38.75.
At this stage of his career, Burge was scoring consistently enough to command a regular Test place. On the 1957–58 tour of South Africa, he made 111 not out against a South African XI in a warm-up for the Tests, and then made 80 in the next match against Border. He was selected in the First Test in Johannesburg. After scoring a duck and 14 in a drawn match, it was Burge who was dropped when vice-captain Neil Harvey returned from injury as Australia took the five-Test series 3–0. Burge scored only one further fifty in the tour matches and ended with 441 runs at 49.00.
At the start of the 1958–59 season, Burge made 74, 94 and 64 in his first three innings. Although he made only 25, 7 and 11 in the last three innings before the Tests, all against Peter May's touring Englishmen, national captain Ian Craig was ruled out due to hepatitis. This gave Burge a recall for the First Test against England in his home town of Brisbane. He made two in his only innings and was dropped again after Australia took an eight-wicket win.Benaud, pp. 128–136. Returning to Queensland duties, he initially failed to capitalise on his starts, with four scores between 30 and 60 in five innings, before striking 101 and 171 against South Australia and Victoria respectively. However, this was not enough for him to gain a recall for the later Tests of the season. Burge ended with season with 764 runs at 50.93.