Joe Darling (Joseph Darling, member of the 1896 Australian Cricket Team)

Joseph Darling (1870–1946), cricketer, landowner and politician, took up cricket in earnest while a student at Prince Alfred College in Adelaide and was fifteen when he set a new record for the highest innings (252) scored in South Australia. At sixteen, he was selected to bat for his home state and he also played in the team that won the South Australian Football Association premiership in 1886. Having worked for several years as the manager of one of his family’s farms, he helped South Australia to victory in a match against the touring England side before making his Test debut in Sydney in December 1894. A nuggetty, left-handed, middle-order batsman, Darling was selected for the Test sides that toured England in 1896, 1899, 1902 and 1905, captaining the victorious 1899 and 1902 sides as well as those of 1901–02 and 1905. In all, he played in 34 Test matches, 31 against England and three against South Africa, ending his international career after the 1905 English tour with a total of 1,657 runs, three centuries, eight half-centuries and a Test batting average of 28.56. After retiring from professional cricket, he relocated his large family to a sheep station in Tasmania, where he raised prize-winning flocks and was active in various rural organisations. He was named a CBE in 1938 and was the Member for Cambridge in the Tasmanian Legislative Council for many years. He died in Hobart in January 1946, survived by his wife of 52 years and twelve of their fifteen children.