Researching Jack Crawford

Crawford established a reputation as an outstanding cricketer while still a schoolboy. He played Test cricket for England before he was 21 years old, and successfully toured Australia with the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in 1907–08. He played only 12 matches for England, although critics believed he had a great future in the sport and was a potential future England captain. In two successive English seasons, he completed the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in first-class games.

A dispute over the composition of a Surrey side chosen to play a high-profile game in 1909, after several professional players were omitted for disciplinary reasons, led to an increasingly bitter disagreement between Crawford and the Surrey authorities. Crawford was told he had no future with the club, and moved to Australia. There, he worked as a teacher and continued his cricket career with South Australia. This arrangement had a controversial end, when he clashed with the South Australian Cricket Association over money and moved to New Zealand to play for Otago.

That relationship also ended badly, and he left Otago before being conscripted into the New Zealand armed forces near the end of the First World War. When he was demobilised, he returned to England and made his peace with Surrey. He played a handful of games between 1919 and 1921 but faded out of first-class cricket to pursue a career in industry. In all first-class cricket, Crawford scored 9,488 runs at an average of 32.60 and took 815 wickets at an average of 20.66. Although he continued to play cricket at a lower level, the remainder of Crawford's life passed in relative obscurity.

Crawford started his National Hockey League career with the Boston Bruins in 1938. He played his entire career with the Bruins and retired after the 1950 season. In 1943 and 1946, he was a member of the NHL All-Star Team. He won two Stanley Cups with Boston 1939, 1941.

Crawford coached 659 games in the American Hockey League (10th on the all-time list) with the Hershey Bears (1950–52), Providence Reds (1955–60), Rochester Americans (1961–62), and Baltimore Clippers (1964-66). He was the general manager of the Cape Cod Cubs of the Eastern Hockey League when he collapsed on January 17, 1973 while attending his team's home game. He died at the Cape Cod Hospital on January 19, 1973. He was 56 years old.

He was born in Armidale to overseer Alexander Crawford and Ethel Mallam. He was a stock worker at Trangie, and from 1939 to 1945 served in the AIF, attaining the rank of major. On his return he moved to Dubbo. In 1941 he had married Joan Brooks; they had three daughters. A member of the Country Party, he was on the party council from 1959 to 1977, the central executive from 1959 to 1971, and was vice-chairman from 1962 to 1963. He was briefly a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, serving from February to April 1970. Crawford died at Glebe in 1982.