It is exactly 70 years since the South East cricket team was involved in a tragic SACA Country Carnival match in Adelaide when an opposition player was murdered.
The local team had taken to the field at the Railways Oval at 10am on February 13, 1952 when shots from a .303 rifle rang out.
Noted sportsman and broadcaster George Kay had just played a delivery from an Upper North bowler when it was noticed that bullets had mortally wounded Captain Arthur Henderson through the heart and struck fellow fieldsman Ross Reed on the shoulder.
In all, the armed assailant fired several rounds from the boundary and was eventually taken into custody by Detective Jim Giles who later became the South Australian Police Commissioner.
Mr Kay died several years ago but often gave accounts of that fateful day in radio interviews and after-dinner speeches.
According to Mr Kay, some of the cricketers thought the sound made by the rifle shots came from a back-firing vehicle on nearby Port Road.
At the time, Capt Henderson was a 31-year-old army officer stationed at the Woomera rocket base.
He was married with three children.
The Advertiser gave this account of the tragedy the following day:
Eye witnesses have told police that Henderson was fielding at cover and Reed was in the slips.
Sgt. L. S. Patroney, of Woomera, who was the bowler, had seen his officer Capt. Henderson, crumple up on the ground and Reed then went down.
“The rest of us went to ground quickly.” said St. Patroney.
“I then saw a man carrying a rifle and somehow we got to the dressing room and more shots were fired.”
A spectator at the match, Albert John Taylor, farmer, of Virginia, told police he was sitting on the western side of the oval when he saw Capt. Henderson drop to the ground.
“Almost immediately something whizzed past my head.
“Then I saw a man on the other side of the oval waving a rifle around.
“Another shot was fired and again the bullet went close to my seat.
“I had a look later and found to gouging marks on the top of the seat which must have been caused by the bullets that I heard.”
A graphic story of the shooting was told to the police by an assistant groundsman at the oval, Arthur Blight, of Dixon Street, Clarence Park.
He saw the fieldsmen fall.
Then from other shots he saw dust rise from the oval and also the mound.
He kept a man carrying a rifle under observation.
“At most times the man held the rifle at the alert while he walked around the oval, outside the pickets, to the western side,” said Mr Blight.
“He started his firing a few yards from a gateway on the eastern side of the oval.”
After a tense stand-off lasting 10 minutes, the gunman was eventually dis-armed by Detective Giles and other police and was arrested.
Elias Gaha, 24, a Lebanese migrant, of Melbourne was charged with murder at the City Watchhouse.
The SACA decided to cancel all Country Carnival matches for the remainder of that week.
Meanwhile, Capt Henderson was buried with full military honours at Centennial Park.
Footnote: 1952 was a fateful year for Mr Kay as he began a 45 year as a broadcaster of racing, trotting and greyhound racing in the SE region. He died at the age of 80 in 2007.
