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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Arthur Gilligan/archive1

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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 Ian Rose 13:49, 2 December 2012 [1].

Arthur Gilligan

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Arthur Gilligan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Sarastro1 (talk) 22:58, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Arthur Gilligan was a fairly mediocre cricketer who captained England because he was an amateur. He may have been good, but an unfortunate injury at the height of his powers effectively ended his career. But the real interest is that he was a fascist. No, really. He probably tried to set up fascist groups in Australia while he toured there as captain in the 1920s. On the other hand, he was highly supportive of Indian cricket when few others were, but was (very) indirectly involved in the clash between the cricket establishment and opposition to Apartheid in South Africa. A bit of a mixed bag really, and quite hard to get a hold of. This article is currently a GA and has been peer reviewed by Mark Arsten and Brianboulton. All comments welcome. Sarastro1 (talk) 22:58, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

As usual, a good all-round article. Reading through it, a few little quirks have caught my eye:

  • Does "England" really need to be linked in the "Born" and "Died" sections of the infobox?
  • "..which was never as effective afterwards.." and two sentences later "His cricket was less effective in following years.." is a little repititious.
  • "All of his teams became good fielding sides under his direction. As a fielder, he inspired his teams to become good fielding sides." is very repititious!
  • "..he played in the school first Eleven.." Does "Eleven" really need to be capitalised? Could also be linked to First eleven, though it is a very short stub.
  • I think it is justified to have First Eleven in this sense, which is probably how they would have written it, and seems to be common enough in the literature. I've gone for First/Second Eleven throughout now, although if anyone pulls me up on this, I'll go back to first eleven as I don't feel too strongly either way. Sarastro1 (talk) 16:38, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "However, he was selected to play.." The use of the word "However" seems odd to me here: it is generally used to contrast in some way, but here his success for his school seems to logically lead on to being picked for representative cricket, and he appears to have done reasonably well.
  • "..invited him to play for their Second Eleven during.." Irrespective of whether you want to keep "Eleven" capitalised, there is inconsistency here between the school's "first Eleven" and the county's "Second Eleven".
  • "His Test debut came on 23 December 1922 in a match which England lost, but team were more successful during his second appearance." Missing a word here after but?
  • "..and his batting at a crucial stage of the match—he scored 39 not out in the second innings—was crucial in a victory.." crucial, crucial.
  • The "On the field" section of the Tour of Australia flogs the same points over and over in my opinion. The tactical inadequacies are particularly repititious, and the word "fielding" gets four mentions in two lines.
  • "..the ideology of the British Empire and fascism." On every instance of "Fascism" and "Communism", except this one, they are capitalised.
  • "The team, the first MCC team to tour India, was very successful." Repitition of "team".
  • In "History of the O.U.C.C." (full ref details on my bookshelf) Bolton says on page 227 that "Knight and Naumann were going well when Arthur Gilligan went on for the second time and brought of the first of those electrifying bowling spells for which he afterwards became famous." If there was nothing about these spells in any of your other references, maybe Bolton is exaggerating things, but it might be worth including if it ties in with anything else you have?
  • I've never seen this anywhere else. He was pretty good for about a season and a half, where he and Tate decimated a succession of batting line-ups, but I've not really seen these called "electrifying bowling spells" before. I think they were one-offs, and I can't say that other sources suggest that he was famous for these. Sarastro1 (talk) 16:38, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A very interesting read, and particularly interesting are the apparent contradictions: a member of the British Fascists, and yet his attitude towards the Indians and the professionals at Sussex suggest a different set of beliefs. Nice work. Harrias talk 11:49, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support: thanks for the fixes, good work! Harrias talk 23:16, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sources review: All sources look reliable, and all citations and reference appear correctly formatted, except for the missing acute accent in "André Deutsch".

Support: I was one of the peer reviewers. I also provided some information relevant to the "D'Oliviera affair", and did a little (not much) copyediting. I think this is an excellent account of the cricketing life of a not noticeably nice man who knew a lot of even less noticeably nice men. On the matter of Gilligan's fascism, I don't suppose his MCC confrères even noticed; their social and political attitudes were formed in the Jurassic era and remained that way until at least the 1980s. Two very small suggestions:

  • Mention M.A. Noble's account of the 1924–25 tour (Gilligan's Men) as "Further reading".
  • Briefly say why Sussex CCC demolished the Gilligan Stand (probably just a question of ground improvements, rather than a blow for liberal values).

Brianboulton (talk) 23:01, 18 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments – I've reviewed about half of the article so far, and it looks solid as usual.

  • Early life: Does "First Eleven" require the capitalization it currently has?
  • Cricket at Cambridge: Typo in "A few day later".
  • "Gilligan left Cambridge and joined a General Produce Merchants in London". Is "Merchants" meant to be singular, or am I not reading this right?
  • England captain: "Gilligan played in the next Test match, without much success, and played for the Gentlemen at Lord's." I'm thinking that the second "played" should go. It's a redundancy, and removing it can be done without changing anything else in the sentence.
  • Political concerns: I don't think that Communism requires the capitalization it has in multiple places.
  • "were members of the British Fascists. The British Fascists...". Repetition from one sentence to another, such as this, is best avoided.
  • Remaining cricket career: "He bowled in the first four game of the season". "game" → "games".
  • Personal life: Comma needed after Harold in the first paragraph of the section.
  • "but when a player withdrew with injury". In the U.S. we would have "an" before "injury", but perhaps it's handled differently in British English. I think it's at least worth bringing up.
  • Ref 12 publisher (MCC) could be spelled out.
  • All caps in ref 60 shouldn't be there. Giants2008 (Talk) 02:22, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Image check - all OK ("PD-Australia", "PD-1996") copyright-wise. Source provided, author unknown. GermanJoe (talk) 07:42, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Crisco 1492
Addressed comments from Crisco 1492 moved to talk page
  • Support – After my long list of comments, and the others, were taken care off, I think this article rises to the level of the other great cricket bio FAs we have and am happy to back it for FA status. Giants2008 (Talk) 02:07, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]


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