Some time in November 1962, I decided to upgrade my living arrangements from squalid to moderately conventional. I was a teacher at a Melbourne suburban high school so it wasn’t easy to find time to look at likely premises. I spent fruitless evenings and weekends in St Kilda and environs touring an array of overpriced attics, damp, gothic basements and backyard sleepouts redolent of lust-tortured tom-cats.
Not long after the visiting Poms under ‘Lord’ Ted Dexter amassed seven for 633 at the MCG against an Australian XI, but some days before Australia beat them by 70 runs in the First Test at the Gabba, I saw an advertisement for a flat in Balaclava. It sounded ideal, but required prompt, weekday action. I had the first part of the morning free of formal teaching so I decided to take a look.
I was greeted at the front door of the flat by the agent, whom I instantly recognised. It was Jack Iverson. Taking up cricket at the age of 31 in 1946, Iverson had graduated from Brighton Thirds to Test Cricket in four years. He was that archetypal figure—the ‘mystery spinner’, as intriguing and romantic as the unknown lad from the bush who turns up unannounced for a practice game and belts the cream of the bowling all over the park. In the 1950–51 series against England, Iverson took 21 wickets at 15.24 runs per wicket, including six for 27 in the Sydney Test. Then he disappeared—back into the no doubt somewhat anticlimactic territory of Real Estate.
He was a big bloke, his bulk accentuated by a tweedy-looking sports jacket from the sleeves of which protruded those famous hands. I remember glancing at them: they were as huge as legend suggested. He was pleasant and welcoming. While we chatted—a conversation in which, for my part, I tried to avoid wide-eyed, ‘knowing’ references to his cricket career (which as a matter of fact I knew intimately) with the same pathological intensity Basil Fawlty brought to not mentioning the war—two more people arrived, a flinty-looking couple in their forties. Iverson then took us on a tour of the flat. It was perfect, but being new to respectable tenancy, I didn’t know what was supposed to happen next. It was obvious the forty-ish couple were equally pleased. Was I supposed to make a bid?
With an amiable smile and a flicker of amusement behind his eyes, Iverson simply