All but the most fanatical of cricket followers will never have heard of Harry “Bert” Kortlang. I certainly hadn’t. However, a few years ago I stumbled across this remarkable cricketer.
Born in Victoria in 1880, Harry Frederick Lorenz Kortlang in some ways was the prototype for the current group of globetrotting T20 guns for hire. Kortlang boasted a career first class average of around 49.77 from 35 matches in a period before and after WWI when this type of record was very good indeed.
For whatever reason, Bert never stayed in one place long enough to establish himself and earn higher honours. Here is a snapshot of Kortlang’s remarkable cricketing journey:
– Kortland left home in Victoria at 15 and played club cricket for Balmain in Sydney in the late 1890s. At some point thereafter Kortlang left for the United States
– In 1901, there is a story of him playing a friendly game of cricket on ice in Alaska, during the Klondike Gold Rush!
– In 1904, there is a record of him moving from Seattle, USA to San Francisco to play for the Alameda club.
– Between 1901 and 1905, he may have played club cricket in New York.
– In 1905, he went to Bermuda and represented their Hamilton Cricket Club on a tour of the Eastern United States. Apparently while there he rode a winner in the Bermuda Amateur Derby.
– In 1906, he found time to win the New York amateur billiards championship. Later that year, he was on the other side of the country during the California earthquakes of 1906, before returning east.
– In 1908, he may have played for Tottenham Hotspur’s baseball club. I could only find one reference and it was not first hand. However, in 1909, he did represent Victoria in baseball.
Kortlang appears to have moved back to Victoria around 1909, where he made the state side. For Victoria, he topped the shield run lists in 1909/10 season, scoring 656 runs at the remarkable average of 131.20 in five games.
He apparently averaged 61 (or 65?) the following season and 45 in 1911/12. These are truly sensational figures during this era.
Kortlang also turned out for the Essendon club in Victoria in 1908/09 where he averaged 96, then there is a missing season, before 1910/11 where he averaged 65 (or 75?) for the season and then averaged 98 in 1911/12.
During this period Kortlang was very close to representing Australia, playing for an Australian XI in 1911 against a touring South African team, but was not selected in the Test side.
Kortlang then turns up in Sydney club cricket in the latter part of the 1911/12 season where he came second in his club’s batting averages.
Kortlang found time during this period to get married in 1911 and divorced in 1919. In 1912, he also almost drowned at Manly saving the daughter of a Sydney politician.
But moving to Sydney and saving damsels in distress was not enough for the restless wanderer and 1912 and 1913 saw him representing South Argentina against the north.
By 1916, he was apparently playing in Barbados, after a trip through Central America. An Australian newspaper reported: “Kortlang, who is known as ‘The Globe Trotter Cricketer’, has played cricket in Australia, New Zealand, Alaska, Chile, Argentina, Singapore, Bermuda, Barbados, West Indies, Canada and the United States.”
(Steven Paston – EMPICS/Getty Images)
At this time, Kortlang ended up enlisting in the Canadian military although he saw no action. Bert was then on the move again, with a New York Times article in 1916 showing him playing against Frankford in the Halifax Cup (and leaving the field due to heat exhaustion).
I then found a photograph of Kortlang from 1917 where he appeared to be playing in Canada.
The following year, Kortlang scored 1,260 runs in 16 innings in 1918 for the 6th Canadian Field Engineers. I believe this club was located in Vancouver, where Kortlang almost certainly played at some point.
By 1919, Kortlang, who was still a formidable cricketer, was playing for Manor Field in the Philadelphia competition and scoring over 600 runs at an average of 66, with three hundreds.
Through all of these travels, the reasons for his movements were a mystery. However, he was well known in cricketing circles. The English captain and administrator, Sir Pelham “Plum” Warner wrote of him: “We hear of him here; we hear of him there; the beggar pops up everywhere.”
By the early 1920s, Kortlang also claimed to have played cricket in Britain, South Africa, India, Fiji, Ceylon and China.
In 1922, Kortlang moved to Wellington NZ and appeared to settle down somewhat. He played there from 1922 to 1927. Even though by 1922 he was 42 years old and had not played first class cricket in a decade, he scored a century on debut for Wellington and topped the run list for the Plunket Shield that first season. Kortlang even represented a New Zealand XI against New South Wales in 1924 at 44 years old. He top scored for the Kiwis.
Kortlang is a member of the Wellington Collegian’s cricket club hall of fame.
Kortlang’s batting was described as ‘patient’ and ‘sound’ but a vicious puller of anything short. By the time he was playing NZ, he was described by a former NZ captain: “There was hardly a stroke in the repertoire of any batsman that was not cleverly used by him. His driving, late cutting, glancing, hooking and pulling all were made in the most artistic style.”
After a career of well over 20 years across Victoria, New South Wales, New Zealand, USA and Canada, Kortlang retired around 1930 (not before having returned and played in Canada once more). However, he was not lost to the game of cricket. He settled down in Western Australia from 1935 and became a sports journalist. He also pioneered baseball in that state and helped set up their first entry into the Claxton Shield in 1937.
Kortlang became a close confidant of Don Bradman’s and Bradman was godfather to Kortlang’s daughter. He finally passed away in 1961 in Western Australia. Some years later, Kortlang’s daughter sold some letters written by Bradman to her father to the Bradman museum.
Sir Donald Bradman. (PA Images via Getty Images)
I found this newspaper article in the Marlborough Express from 1922 where Kortlang is interviewed after Wellington secured his services. It goes through his results in Victoria and then goes on to say “But Kortlang is not an Australian cricketer, nor is he an Australian. No siree! He is an American citizen, who always feels like waving ‘Old Glory’ on the Fourth of July.” His birthplace was Victoria and Kortlang’s US citizenship was courtesy of his father, who was born in New York.
The article goes on to say he played cricket for nine years before coming to Australia, mostly in Philadelphia (US cricket’s strongest foothold in those days) and New York “but really all over the world – India, China, England and Australia”. It then goes on to say that he once played a game in Alaska on pack ice in 1901 between passengers of two ships who were stuck in the ice. He also states he played for “All America” against a touring England side in Philadelphia in 1907/08.
He goes on to give his assessment of the different cricket grounds, and relative strengths of USA cricket. He says the game at the time “reaches its highest standard in Philadelphia, is good in New York, fair in Chicago, poor in Denver, but there are some good men on the Pacific Slope”.
With such a wandering spirit of adventure and prolific record, who knows how Bert Kortlang would have fared in today’s era of worldwide franchise T20s and mercenaries for hire. I suspect he would have been in the thick of it.
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