Wisden overview
A copy of Sporting Life magazine, illustrating the bizarre spin-bowling grip of Jack Iverson in 1950, started John Gleeson, a 12-year-old from the country town of Kyogle in New South Wales, on a peculiar cricket odyssey. A club-standard wicketkeeper who played abroad for the itinerant Emus club, he continued experimenting with the finger-flicking Iverson method for more than a decade before trying it in a match, then within five years found himself playing Test cricket. Not Iverson's equal as a bowler, he was nonetheless a better cricketer, and exploited his reputation as a "mystery spinner" archly. Captains, however, were inclined to overbowl him on unsympathetic surfaces, and he might have achieved more with better handling. Gideon Haigh

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd