James Pyke (cricketer)
Encyclopedia
James Kendrick Pyke is a former Australia
n sportsman who represented South Australia
in Sheffield Shield cricket
and also played Australian rules football
at a high level. As well as competing for Norwood
in the South Australian National Football League
(SANFL), Pyke was twice drafted to the Victorian Football League
, although he never played a senior game.
but spent his early childhood in North America
. His father, Frank Pyke
, was a footballer for in the West Australian Football League
and an academic, who moved with his wife and son to the United States in December 1966 to study at Indiana University
. While in the United States, Pyke's brother, Don
, was born. Don Pyke would later play in two premiership sides with the West Coast Eagles
. Before returning to Australia in 1972, the family also spent time in Normal
, Illinois
, and Halifax, Nova Scotia
.
He spent the early 1980s in the Australian Capital Territory
and played Under-16, Under-19 and senior cricket for the territory. As a 17-year-old, Pyke played a match for the ACT First XI against the touring West Indian cricket team
at Manuka Oval
. He was dismissed by Guyanese
international cricketer Roger Harper
for nine runs.
In the 1984–85 season, Pyke toured India
and Sri Lanka
with the Australia Under-19 cricket team, which featured future internationals Tom Moody
, Paul Reiffel
and Gavin Robertson
. He played three "Tests" against India and one more in Sri Lanka, as a top order batsman and part time bowler. Easily the team's best performer during the "Tests", Pyke scored 544 runs at 136.00. In the opening "Test", against India's Under 19s in Delhi
, Pyke came in at six in the first innings and scored 201 not out. For the rest of the tour, Pyke opened the batting for Australia and scored another century in Patna
.
Now playing in South Australia
, Pyke played for the state's Colts team until making his Sheffield Shield debut in February 1986. He won the Don Bradman Medal for his efforts at West Torrens
in the 1985–86 season.
On the football field he was also putting in good performances for Norwood
and was selected by Footscray
in the 1986 VFL Draft
, with the 45th selection.
Having just broken into the South Australian cricket team, Pyke opted to keep playing cricket and appeared in eight of their 10 matches in the 1986/87 Shield season. He was also a member of South Australia's McDonald's Cup winning side that summer and at the end of the season joined the team in a tour of New Zealand
. In the second List A fixture against the Ian Smith led Central Districts
, at Fitzherbert Park
in Palmerston North
, Pyke scored 177 off 159 balls with five sixes. This bettered his previous best limited overs score of just 19 and set a record for the highest individual innings for a List A match in New Zealand. The record remained until 2007, when Matthew Hayden
scored an unbeaten 181 in a One Day International. It however is still the highest limited overs score by a South Australian.
Pyke, who now works as a physiotherapist, played his last match for South Australia in 1988. He continued playing football with Norwood and in the 1989 Pre-season Draft
was again recruited to the VFL, selected by Collingwood
with the 25th selection. He never played a senior league game for Collingwood.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n sportsman who represented South Australia
Southern Redbacks
The South Australia cricket team, nicknamed the Southern Redbacks and known as the West End Redbacks due to their sponsorship agreement with local brewers West End, are an Australian first class cricket team based in Adelaide, South Australia, and represent the state of South Australia...
in Sheffield Shield cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
and also played Australian rules football
Australian rules football
Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...
at a high level. As well as competing for Norwood
Norwood Football Club
Norwood Football Club, nicknamed, Redlegs, is an Australian rules football club belonging to the South Australian National Football League in the state of South Australia...
in the South Australian National Football League
South Australian National Football League
The South Australian National Football League is an Australian rules football league based in the Australian state of South Australia. It is also the governing body for the sport of Australian rules football in South Australia....
(SANFL), Pyke was twice drafted to the Victorian Football League
Australian Football League
The Australian Football League is both the governing body and the major professional competition in the sport of Australian rules football...
, although he never played a senior game.
Career
Pyke was born in Western AustraliaWestern Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
but spent his early childhood in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. His father, Frank Pyke
Frank Pyke
Frank Sherman Pyke was an Australian sports scientist, educator, author, Australian rules footballer and sports administrator. He played 130 games for in the Western Australian National Football League , and later served as a professor at a number of universities in Australia, Canada and the...
, was a footballer for in the West Australian Football League
West Australian Football League
The West Australian Football League is an Australian rules football league based in Perth, Western Australia. The WAFL is the second-most popular in the state, behind the nation-wide Australian Football League...
and an academic, who moved with his wife and son to the United States in December 1966 to study at Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
. While in the United States, Pyke's brother, Don
Don Pyke
Donald Lachlan Pyke is a former Australian rules football player, administrator and coach. He played for in the West Australian Football League and in the Australian Football League , and later served as senior coach at Claremont and assistant coach at...
, was born. Don Pyke would later play in two premiership sides with the West Coast Eagles
West Coast Eagles
The West Coast Eagles are an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League. The club is based in Perth, Western Australia. The club was founded in 1986 and played its first games in the 1987 season. Its current home ground is Subiaco Oval...
. Before returning to Australia in 1972, the family also spent time in Normal
Normal, Illinois
Normal is an incorporated town in McLean County, Illinois, United States. It had a population of 52,497 as of the 2010 census. Normal is the smaller of two principal municipalities of the Bloomington-Normal metropolitan area...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, and Halifax, Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
.
He spent the early 1980s in the Australian Capital Territory
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory, often abbreviated ACT, is the capital territory of the Commonwealth of Australia and is the smallest self-governing internal territory...
and played Under-16, Under-19 and senior cricket for the territory. As a 17-year-old, Pyke played a match for the ACT First XI against the touring West Indian cricket team
West Indian cricket team
The West Indian cricket team, also known colloquially as the West Indies or the Windies, is a multi-national cricket team representing a sporting confederation of 15 mainly English-speaking Caribbean countries, British dependencies and non-British dependencies.From the mid 1970s to the early 1990s,...
at Manuka Oval
Manuka Oval
Manuka Oval is a 13,550 capacity ground located in the suburb of Griffith, adjacent to Manuka, a business district of Canberra, Australia's capital....
. He was dismissed by Guyanese
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
international cricketer Roger Harper
Roger Harper
Roger Andrew Harper is a former West Indies cricketer turned coach, who played both Test and ODI cricket for the West Indies...
for nine runs.
In the 1984–85 season, Pyke toured India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
with the Australia Under-19 cricket team, which featured future internationals Tom Moody
Tom Moody
Thomas Masson Moody is a former Australian cricketer and coach of the Sri Lankan cricket team. Today he is the coach for the IPL team Kings XI Punjab...
, Paul Reiffel
Paul Reiffel
Paul Ronald Reiffel is a former Australian cricketer who played in 35 Tests and 92 ODIs from 1992 to 1999. He was part of Australia's victorious 1999 World Cup team. After retirement he became a First Class cricket umpire.-Playing career:Reiffel's career best bowling figures of 6-71 came at...
and Gavin Robertson
Gavin Robertson
Gavin Ron Robertson is a former Australian cricketer who played in 4 Tests and 13 ODIs from 1994 to 1998 after a first-class cricket career that saw him depart New South Wales for Tasmania and then return to New South Wales.Robertson is also a member of the band Six & Out with Australian fast...
. He played three "Tests" against India and one more in Sri Lanka, as a top order batsman and part time bowler. Easily the team's best performer during the "Tests", Pyke scored 544 runs at 136.00. In the opening "Test", against India's Under 19s in Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
, Pyke came in at six in the first innings and scored 201 not out. For the rest of the tour, Pyke opened the batting for Australia and scored another century in Patna
Patna
Paṭnā , is the capital of the Indian state of Bihar and the second largest city in Eastern India . Patna is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world...
.
Now playing in South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
, Pyke played for the state's Colts team until making his Sheffield Shield debut in February 1986. He won the Don Bradman Medal for his efforts at West Torrens
West Torrens Cricket Club
The West Torrens District Cricket Club is a semi-professional cricket club in Adelaide, South Australia. It competes in the West End Grade Cricket Competition, which is administered by the South Australian Cricket Association ....
in the 1985–86 season.
On the football field he was also putting in good performances for Norwood
Norwood Football Club
Norwood Football Club, nicknamed, Redlegs, is an Australian rules football club belonging to the South Australian National Football League in the state of South Australia...
and was selected by Footscray
Western Bulldogs
The Western Bulldogs are an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League . The club is based at the Whitten Oval in West Footscray, an inner-western suburb of Melbourne...
in the 1986 VFL Draft
1986 VFL Draft
The 1986 VFL Draft was the first formal draft to provide recruitment opportunities to clubs participating in Australian rules football's elite Victorian Football League...
, with the 45th selection.
Having just broken into the South Australian cricket team, Pyke opted to keep playing cricket and appeared in eight of their 10 matches in the 1986/87 Shield season. He was also a member of South Australia's McDonald's Cup winning side that summer and at the end of the season joined the team in a tour of New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
. In the second List A fixture against the Ian Smith led Central Districts
Central Districts Stags
The Central Districts Stags are a New Zealand first class cricket team based in central New Zealand. It competes in the State Championship first class competition and the State Shield domestic one day competition...
, at Fitzherbert Park
Fitzherbert Park
Fitzherbert Park is a cricket ground in Palmerston North in New Zealand, a home ground of the Central Districts. In February 2000, New Zealand Women defeated England Women at the ground....
in Palmerston North
Palmerston North
Palmerston North is the main city of the Manawatu-Wanganui region of the North Island of New Zealand. It is an inland city with a population of and is the country's seventh largest city and eighth largest urban area. Palmerston North is located in the eastern Manawatu Plains near the north bank...
, Pyke scored 177 off 159 balls with five sixes. This bettered his previous best limited overs score of just 19 and set a record for the highest individual innings for a List A match in New Zealand. The record remained until 2007, when Matthew Hayden
Matthew Hayden
Matthew Lawrence Hayden AM is a former Australian cricketer, and was signed to the Chennai Super Kings in the IPL until the 2010 season. Hayden is a powerful and aggressive left-handed opening batsman, known for his ability to score quickly at both Test and one day levels.Hayden holds the record...
scored an unbeaten 181 in a One Day International. It however is still the highest limited overs score by a South Australian.
Pyke, who now works as a physiotherapist, played his last match for South Australia in 1988. He continued playing football with Norwood and in the 1989 Pre-season Draft
1989 VFL Draft
The 1989 VFL Draft was the fourth annual National Draft held by the Victorian Football League as the main method for the 14 teams to recruit players for the 1990 season. It consisted of a trading period, pre-draft selections, the main national draft and the 1990 pre-season draft and a...
was again recruited to the VFL, selected by Collingwood
Collingwood Football Club
The Collingwood Football Club, nicknamed The Magpies, is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League...
with the 25th selection. He never played a senior league game for Collingwood.