Vale Ken “Froggie” Thomson

Alan ‘Froggie’ Thomson, who died recently, aged 76, was a one-off, says KEN PIESSE:

It had been almost 50 years since Alan ‘Froggie’ Thomson’s last Ashes Test and as I approached his front door, a wall of sound greeted me.

The Frog was playing his classical music full bore and despite my repeated knocks, it was a full five minutes before he appeared. ‘You have to thump on the door like this,’ he said, almost taking the door off his hinges.

He’d lived like a hermit for years and had little family contact since separating from his wife Dianne. ‘It was tempestuous,’ he said of their relationship.

His public forays were rare, other than having a Friday morning coffee with his shopping mates, a fortnight’s timeshare on the Mornington Peninsula and a sponsored day at the cricket during the Boxing Day Test.

He’d lost height and had a serious respiratory complaint, stopping him from working in his back garden for more than a few minutes.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’re the first visitor I’ve had here for months. If I keel over tomorrow, they’ll take months to find me. I hardly go out at all now. But I still follow the cricket and like the old DVDs.’

I wrote the Frog’s story for our Australian Cricket Society’s Pavilion magazine. One of those who read it, Dean Jones, broke down in tears. Froggie had also been his hero.

No post-war Melburnian had rushed to 100 first-class wickets in just 16 games. Bowling wide out on the return crease with a front-on wind-milling action, the Frog bowled Victoria to the 1969-70 Sheffield Shield under the captaincy of the legendary Bob Cowper, in his final full season.

In the annual ‘Christmas Test’ against New South Wales, Thomson took five for 54 and eight for 87 and shared in a comical, matchwinning 58-run 10^th wicket stand with fellow tailender Blair Campbell.

So hot was it on a third day that a thermometer was brought to the middle of the MCG and recorded 129 degrees F.

He loved Cowper but was still dirty all these years later on how his teammates weeks later threw him into an Adelaide hotel swimming pool during the Shield winning celebrations. He hurt his side and wasn’t able to go full tilt in the final match in Perth.

He said the prank reminded of the bullying he received at school, where his nickname had been bestowed for his deep, booming voice. ‘My mates reckon they could hear me four blocks away.’

In his mid teens he’d been advised by the legendary Englishman Frank Tyson to bowl in a more orthodox fashion but he refused, saying if he tried to change his action he’d fall flat on his face. 

He was tall for the time at 188cm (6ft 2in), and could bowl long spells, despite being just 73kg (11st 7lb). When the ball was new, his natural in-slant and bounce could be awkward.

His proudest moment came in his hometown Test against Ray Illingworth’s 1970-71 Englishmen. He dismissed Geoff Boycott and John Edrich early and led the Australians from the field at lunch on Day 1.

One Test later, having opened the bowling ahead of debutant Dennis Lillee, he was gone, never to return.

He’d been told by captain Bill Lawry to bowl short and as fast as he could at England’s batsmen, especially fast bowler John Snow. ‘I was told I had to either get a wicket or knock someone’s head off. But I didn’t want to bounce Snowy,’ he said. ‘I’m not brave. I’m not suicidal.’

His 12 Test wickets cost 54 runs apiece. He is proud that he played in the first ever MCG one-day international (the players wore normal whites) and took the first wicket (Boycott c Lawry, b Thomson 8).

Years later Boycott was studying a picture of Thomson’s first ball in the Test series, to teammate Brian Luckhurst at the ‘Gabba. ‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘He has already released the ball and Brian hasn’t even picked up his bat.’

Selected for an Australia ‘B’ tour of New Zealand in the autumn of 1970, he roomed with a young Dennis Lillee and loved to remind how Cowper had told his Victorian players that Lillee was fast but didn’t always know ‘where it was going’.

‘He learnt quick didn’t he!’ said The Frog, bellowing in delight.

His last big-time game was in 1974, about the time that his namesake Jeff Thomson was emerging further north.

Away from cricket, Thomson was a primary school teacher and later, a courier. 

He’d been in touch with me only weeks earlier, to have a copy of our new-season cricket magazine sent to him at the nursing home. ‘It has all the stats I want,’ he said

He died soon afterwards, at Box Hill hospital on October 31, having broken his hip after a fall at a nursing home.

His family, including his two children, Chris and Sally and four grandchildren scattered his ashes over the Brunswick St. Oval, the old home of Fitzroy Cricket Club just north of the city, where he’d made his name.

RIP Frog.