by Mayukh Ghosh
As soon as the stretcher-bearer arrived at Gallipoli, he was reprimanded for drunkenness.
A few months later, in Cairo, he was absent without leave.
But they persisted with him. No one else was that fearless while carrying people off in front of the enemy's guns.
But then, in October 1917, he was shot and killed.
There are several stories that were told of his death - some were meant to make him out to be a hero, others suggested that he was unintelligent, and all were demonstrably untrue.
Perhaps the most plausible account states that he was killed after the fighting was over.
A Turkish soldier had pretended to surrender before he killed this man. It's recorded that one stretcher-bearer was killed in this manner and there has only been one identified stretcher bearer who died at that time in Beersheba.
Twelve years before all this, Australian captain Joe Darling asked his fast bowler to keep the ball on off-stump and beat the batsman with sheer pace. He assured him that there would be many slip fielders to help him.
According to the English press his pace was 'dangerous for life'.
It indeed was.
Tibby Cotter knew only one way to bowl. Fast. Very fast.
But he was so good that even though he was arrested for assaulting a policeman, the magistrate let him off with a small fine because the Australian cricket team needed him.
Two years later in 1909, his affair with an English barmaid may have resulted in a child who was subsequently put up for adoption. Trivialities like that never bothered Cotter.
Cotter was not the most disciplined of men but he was talented.
Possibly, he holds the record for the fastest fifty ( by the clock) in Australian domestic cricket.
He was also a leading Rugby Union player in Sydney.
But he never understood how valuable or famous he was.
Either he played the games he loved or he sat in a bar and got drunk till he could hardly move.
He left behind almost no writing of his own - just a few banal lines on the back of a postcard, as far as anyone knows.
The mysteries surrounding his death often overshadow his playing days.
Unfortunate, as he himself was.
Tibby Cotter was born on December 3, 1883.
P.S. All of Max Bonnell's books are very well researched. And the book on Tibby Cotter is probably his best and the one which gave him recognition.