Quite a story

Here's the amazing story of Albert Moss, a man I would have loved to have met.

Albert was born near Gloucester in 1863 and emigrated to New Zealand as a young man. He was a talented cricketer and on his first-class cricket debut for Canterbury against Wellington in 1889, took all ten wickets for 28 runs, still easily the best bowling performance ever on debut. The ball with which he accomplished this was mounted, inscribed and presented to him.

Sadly, his life and cricket career went downhill very quickly from there. He took to drinking heavily, tried to kill his wife Mary and spent five years in prison. Not surprisingly, she left him (taking the precious ball with her) and later divorced him.

By 1909, having moved to South Africa, he was at his lowest ebb and about to drown himself in Cape Town docks. On an impulse, he called into a Salvation Army hostel. They helped him to turn his life around; and he devoted the rest of his time to working for the Salvation Army.

 
Now comes the incredible bit. In 1914, Mary Moss, his ex-wife, was on a walking holiday on the North Island of New Zealand. A piece of newspaper blew up against her leg. Picking it up to throw it away, she noticed the name 'Moss'. The paper was a fragment of the War Cry published in South Africa and the article was about the salvationist work of one Captain Albert Moss.
If she was surprised, imagine Albert’s shock when a parcel was delivered to him in Rondebosch and, on opening it, he found the precious inscribed ball, together with a note in Mary’s familiar handwriting, just saying: "I thought you would like this." 

Three years later, they re-married and had ten happy years together both in South Africa and England until Mary died (or in Salvationist terms, was promoted to Glory) in 1928. Albert lived to the age of 82, a loyal and hard-working Salvationist to the end.

If someone made that story into a film, you would say it was a bit far-fetched but it is vouched for by articles in the Cricket Statistician (a great journal if you ignore the statistics) and in the Salvationist newspaper.