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Fitzroy Doncaster Cricket Club
Played 1954-55 – 1967-68
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Player records
Club honours
Hall of Fame · inducted 2013
1st X1 career: 1954-55 to 1967-68 (11 seasons; 95 matches)
Polished right-handed batsman: 3609 runs, average 40.10, with 9 centuries.
1st Class Career: Appeared in 81 matches for Victoria, scoring 6142 runs at 41.20 with 14 centuries and 31 wickets at 41.51. Toured New Zealand in 1959-60 & England in 1964 with the Australian team.
An inspiring captain for 8 seasons. Led Fitzroy to premierships in 1960-61 and 1966-67.
Club Legend · inducted 2017
Jack Potter debuted for Fitzroy in 1954-55 aged 16 and went on to play 95 games for the Club over 11 seasons. He was a polished right hand batsman,and scored 3609 runs at an average of 40.10 with a highest score of 170 and 9 centuries.
Jack also played for Melbourne University Cricket Club while studying there, and on his return to Fitzroy in 1960-61 became captain of the Club, leading it to a Premiership in his first season as captain, aged 22. He made his first century for the Club in 1961-62, by which time he had already made 6 centuries for Victoria.
Jack made his debut for Victoria aged 18 in January 1957. Consistent scoring in 1959-60 led to his inclusion in an Australian B team to tour New Zealand. In 1963-64 he played a dominating innings of 123no against the touring South Africans and was selected in the XII for the second Test. However, he was made 12th man for the game.
In 1964 Jack was selected in the Australian touring team to England, however, while he was 12th man again for the First Test, he did not play a Test during the tour. Towards the end of the tour Jack fractured his skull during a one-day match in the Netherlands. He was therefore unable to tour India and Pakistan along with the rest of the team, where he was likely to have made his Test debut, given that the other players who did not play a Test in England were all given at least one Test in India.
In 1966-67 he captained the Club to another Premiership, making a century in the Final. In the same season he captained Victoria to a Sheffield Shield win, while Bill Lawry and the Australian Team were away in South Africa. During that season he averaged 53 in interstate games and 100 for Fitzroy.
Jack’s First Class record was 104 matches, 6142 runs at an average of 41.22 with 14 hundreds and 33 fifties. His highest score was 221 against NSW at the MCG in 1965-66. He also took 31 wickets at an average of 41.51 with a best of 4/20. He holds the record of being 12th man the highest number of times (3) without playing a Test.
In “Äustralian Elegance”, by Marc Fiddian, the author compares the elegance of Jack’s batting to Kippax and Trumper, saying “One player who could have been in the same class as the above pair was Jack Potter, the Victorian batsman of the 1960’s…….Potter, a lightly built man, scored his runs with an ease and grace that made the person on the other side of the fence grateful that they had seen him make 55 or 75. Surely a century would have crowned the innings. Indeed it would, but such a thought left you feeling utterly greedy rather than remaining thankful for what you had received. Watching Potter was an exercise in forgetting to look at the scoreboard. The focus was on his deft use of the bat, his sweetly timed drives and cuts, some majestic square drives and a neat leg-glance here and there. His hooks were so well executed that there was no sense of explosive power, yet the resultant boundary was the same”.
Career figures combine what's recorded live in Morrie with the club's own historical records — averages are shown only where there's enough real data to be honest about.
Jack retired from the Victorian team during the 1967-68 season, and the following season left Fitzroy to play sub-district cricket as captain-coach of Preston.
Between 1987 and 1989 he was the inaugural head coach of the Australian Cricket Academy.