The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 15:59, 1 September 2009 [1].

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Ernie Toshack with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948[edit]

Nominator(s): YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 01:04, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Featured article candidates/Ernie Toshack with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948/archive1

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One of the main members of the Invincibles, played in four of the five Tests until his knee broke down. YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 01:04, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I went through and gave it a rough copyedit. Support. Daniel (talk) 05:13, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the ambig with season and tour; I guess if I look it up there were no other wins bigger than inns and 451 YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 05:28, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Support

• I am not familiar with this epic run of Yellow Monkey's Invincibles' articles, so i am sure someone will jump in if they think I'm out of line here. All WP articles I would have thought should be reasonably self-contained: they should make sense in their own right. The body text beings "Towards the end of the Test series against Indian in 1947–48 in Australia, knee injuries had begun to hamper Toshack,..." At which point I'm thinking "who's Toshack? Bowler or batsman?" etc. My understanding - i've had an interchange with User:SlimVirgin about this - is that the lead is supposed to summarise the body of the article. Reversing that statement, therefore, the article body of the text should tell me everything that is summarised in the lead. It doesn't. The body text assumes i know this is about Cricket, about a tour to England, what sort of cricketer Toshack was (batsman, bowler) etc etc. I think the background needs to lunch in less abruptly.

Added a more comprehensive background on Toshack's cricket career. YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 06:57, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• That's much better. When you have the time, I recommend a run through all the sister articles (which I believe you intend to bring through FAC) and check they provide similar context. hamiltonstone (talk) 11:34, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Minor point - something is seriously wrong with the note before the references.

I had to come to an agreement with some other users who objected to me using a large grouped ref in the text, so a solution was made up to get one cite to link to a separate grouped cite numbers. Simply grouping 30 refs in one ref markup would not have worked because the refs were reused then we would have printed the same 30 refs in full twice YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 06:57, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• That may be the case, but it is incomprehensible to a reader. They get to a sentence in the last para, which says "...invariably being placed at either No. 10 and No. 11 in the order alongside Johnston,[1] another tailender with little batting ability.N-[1]", and this strange N-1 thing points down to a string of footnote cite tags. No text at all. Even with the benefit of your initial response above I have no idea what this is about. Why do you need to cite all these matches to support this sentence? Is there seriously no analysis (in the sporting pages of the papers in1948-49 for example, let alone the books about this famous team) that would substantiate the preceding remark? However, if the note is necessary, please provide some text for it (here and in all the similar articles, if this is a system across these individual articles) so that a reader coming to this cold can make sense of it. It should be easily done, either as text in the note, or as article text directly beneath the "Statistical note" heading. hamiltonstone (talk) 11:34, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Added a note. Nobody bothered to write that down in the book explcitly as they simply said that Toshack was more or less useless with the bat. With Tests, you can query the Statsguru summariser on Cricinfo, but this is not available for the tour matches. YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 03:39, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm happy with those amendments. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comments: I'm going to be a grammar Nazi (to the benefit of the article) so try to put up with my comments:
  • The first paragraph of the lead is just confusing. "went undefeated in their 34 matches", is this talking about Ernie or the Aus Cricket Team? If it's the latter I assume you want "was undefeated in its 34 matches" or similar. If it's the former, distinction needs to be made because the sentence runs: Ernie, Aus, Ernie, with no obvious break.

Fixed YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 03:39, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• • Background: "played in every Test over the next two summers, fitness permitting". Isn't that stating the obvious? Doesn't everyone play, fitness permitting? How many did he actually miss due to injury?

Well they can be dropped in favour of a another player if he plays badly. He missed three. YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 03:39, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• • Does "1948 tour of England" need to be linked as "1948 Ashes series"?

No, the tour is linked to the tour and the 1948 is a subarticle of it YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 03:39, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• • " ": From and including: "The tour was to guarantee him immortality as a member of Bradman's Invincibles." I begin to lose my way:
    • Firstly, the opening sentence has two meanings for me: the tour guaranteed him a permanent place in Bradman's team, or, being part of Bradman's team guaranteed him publicity. In both cases, is "immortal" the right term to use? How about "As a member of Bradman's Invincibles, the tour was to immortalise him"?
    • "during the voyage". Which voyage is this? It's probably to England, but this is "Background", which could encompass any number of years; it's best to specify.
    • "As a result, there are still sheets in circulation with his name mis-spelt as Toshak." Why would mis-spelling be a given result of his friend signing autographs? Was Toshak his nickname or was his friend not good with a pen?
    • What is that last sentence doing there?

Removed or clarified these

• I'll continue my tyraid later. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 09:40, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Much better. Some more things:

• • Does World War II need to be wikilinked?

I link everything that is a common noun but if you want to step in then I won't revert you YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:22, 21 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay I've removed it on the basis of familiarity with the reader and it being of little further relevance to the article. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 10:30, 22 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• • "Toshack again focused on the leg stump", near the bottom of "Early Tour Matches" is almost duplicated in "Role". Is this meant to happen or are there two instances of this in the tour? Or is the point of "Role" to sum up what has already been said?

Yeah, the role explains the themes of his playing role/style YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:22, 21 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• • Would it not be good to have a picture in amongst the article somewhere? The article on Ernie Toshack has some good ones (no doubt you're aware of this having worked on it so much!), so is there an issue with using them?

Jappalang would object to those, as they aren't definitively pre-1946, that's why I commented them out.

Okay, won't pursue that then.

By the way, your campaign on The Invincibles for FAT is incredible. How long has it taken you to reach this stage?

A while. The "in 48" ones didn't take so long because there is a big overlap with the contents of the individual Tests, as the tour games were teh only things that had to be put in. Miller and the daughter articles took the most. Bradman took a lot of time from Phanto282 (talk · contribs) YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:22, 21 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 09:09, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. (I went ahead and fixed the two niggles) Ealdgyth - Talk 22:50, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Support - Another fine and MOS compliant article by YellowMonkey.--Grahame (talk) 00:00, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment – Three Roland Perry books are listed in the references, but only one is used as a cite. Somewhat curious as to why that is the case, and if they should be listed under Further reading instead. Prose looks okay at the start of the article, but I want to read the entire page before supporting. Giants2008 (17–14) 01:22, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Removed redudnant YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 00:31, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support – Gave it a brief cleanup pass, and the article looked good. The background section was a welcome addition, and I hope to see it in other articles on the topic that reach FAC. Giants2008 (17–14) 00:08, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comments

*"After the hosts recovered to 6/148, Toshack returned", "Toshack had taken 6/51 in a long spell of 27 overs" these sentences appear to contradict each other, the first suggests he came back at 6/148, the second that he bowled throughout most of the innings including during the MCC recovery.

• Ken Cranston was an all-rounder rather than batsman.
• "the hosts were skittled for 89" 86 according to CA.
• Tim Lester -> Ted Lester
• "Saggers stood up to the wickets and stumped Tim Lester before Toshack removed three more lower-order batsmen" This suggests that Lester was a low order batsman, yet he batted at five.
• "Bradman elected to use his part-timers" Three of the four bowlers used were Johnston, McColl and Ring who aren't part-timers to me.
• "Toshack took four catches on tour" two according to CA.
• "As Australia's other specialist bowlers were Lindwall, McCool, Johnson and Doug Ring, all of whom made centuries and more than 20 fifties each during their first-class career" Lindwall had 19 and Ring 20.

--Jpeeling (talk) 17:55, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed all of these. I shoudl ahve checked the card before taking Fingo at face value that Ring and McCool were part-timers. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:40, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Should any of this be hyphenated?

• A left arm medium pace seam bowler ...

Sure. I never consciously thought about hyphens, but all my other articles have hyphens, so I don't know what happened in writing this article

• What is "Toshack was a member of the first-choice XI," first-choice XI?

Easier to just say team. XI in a team, he was in the first-choice team, ie, not a bench YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 02:25, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• What does 5/40 mean ?

• his most notable performance was the 5/40 ...

There is a footnote attached to this. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 02:25, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:06, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Support - Don't know much at all about Toshack and was an interesting read. This sentence in 'First Test' seems slightly awkward, "During the second innings, Bradman thought that rain might come so he utilised Toshack to bowl defensive leg theory." Anyway maybe it's just me. Aaroncrick (talk) 11:05, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.