John Charles Hill (25 June 1923 – 11 August 1974) was an Australian cricketer who played in three Test matches from 1953 to 1955.
Education
The son of a Stipendiary Magistrate, Mr. Alec Hill, S.M., Hill received his secondary education at St Patrick's College, Ballarat.
War service
He moved to Melbourne in 1941 and took up a position under the Naval Board; and he went on to see active service in the Royal Australian Air Force from 1942 to 1946.
Football
A star half-forward with St Patrick's College, he trained with Richmond Football Club in the 1943 pre-season, and was placed on their supplementary list at the start of the 1943 season.
He played intermittently for Richmond's Second Eighteen; and, in 1946, he was released by Richmond to the Belgrave Football Club in the Mountain District Football Association.
In 1949, in a semi-finals match on 17 September 1949, in which he kicked nine goals for Belgrave, he was knocked out during the match. He thought nothing of the injury and, thinking it was just concussion, he sought no additional medical treatment. On 4 October, he collapsed at work, and was hospitalised. At the hospital, it was discovered that he had fractured his skull (the second time that he had fractured his skull in his football career). He immediately retired from football, having set the goal-kicking record of 152 goals in a single season.
He was not fit enough to resume cricket until 29 October 1949; and the consequences of this severe head injury were such that he suffered from severe headaches from time to time for the rest of his life; and, very often, he had to take special headache powders in order for him to be able to play cricket.
Cricket
He was already an outstanding schoolboy cricketer whilst at St Patrick's College, where he took 118 wickets in four years, at a time when the college's team only played four matches a year. At 15 years of age he was selected to play in the Ballarat Cricket Association's (senior) team that competed in the Provincial Group of the March 1939 Country Week Carnival in Melbourne. He played at least one of these matches at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
He played District Cricket for the Melbourne Cricket Club from the beginning of the 1941/1942 season. In his first match for Melbourne, playing against the Essendon Cricket Club, he put on an exceptional performance after the break for tea:
During the time he was in the R.A.A.F. he was stationed near Sydney and, whilst there, he played intermittently with the Mosman Cricket Club. In 1945 he transferred to the St Kilda Cricket Club.
Reporting on his October 1945 debut for St Kilda, following his 1945 transfer from Melbourne, The Argus commented:
State Cricket
He played in 69 Sheffield Shield cricket matches for Victoria, from 1946 to 1956, scoring 867 runs, and taking 218 wickets. He took a wicket, bowling the South Australian batsman Tom Klose with the first ball he ever bowled for Victoria.
He was also famous for not scoring what might have been the easiest runs ever scored in a Sheffield Shield Cricket in the first innings of Victoria's match against New South Wales, at the St Kilda Cricket Ground on Saturday, 24 December 1955:
Test Cricket
Selection
To the relief of the many who had come to refer to the continuously overlooked Hill as "Australia's forgotten cricketer", the Australian selectors announced in February 1953, that they had selected him for the team to tour England for the 1953 "Coronation" Ashes series.
Although cricket writer Tom Goodman thought that Hill's selection was "a surprise" and "a gamble", former Australian champion spin-bowler Bill "Tiger" O'Reilly, commended the Australian selectors for "[their] effort to tighten up the distressing state of our spin attack" and expressed his view that "if Hill can adapt himself to the English conditions he will be a certain choice for the Test attack on tour".
At the time of his 1953 Test selection, a newspaper described his action as follows:
In its October 1974 obituary, The Cricketer described his action, which can be seen at and also at as follows:
Tasmania
On the way to England, Hill played with an Australian XI against a Tasmanian team, in Hobart, in March 1953. On the first day, the Australian XI were 9/505 at stumps. By the end of the second day the Tasmanian team were 2/21 in their second innings, having been forced to follow on after being all out for 202. Hill bowled eleven overs, had three maidens and took none for 24. The Tasmanian team went on to score 234 in its second innings; Hill taking 2 for 28 off 11 overs (with three maidens).