he stumped Vinoo Mankad off the bowling of Dooland, one of only two stumpings in his career as a very occasional wicketkeeper. Back in England in 1957 he was joined at Taunton by another Australian, Bill Alley, but still finished as the leading scorer for the county with 1,678 runs in all matches, to go with 44 wickets. In the wet summer of 1958 Somerset finished third in the Championship, their highest position since 1892. McCool's contribution was 1,590 runs and 46 wickets at, for him, the low average of 23 runs each. In this season, McCool made his highest score for Somerset – 169 out of a total of 314 against Worcestershire at Stourbridge – and in the last match of the season he produced his best bowling figures of his career, taking eight second-innings Nottinghamshire wickets for 74 runs on what Wisden described as "a sporting pitch". In contrast to 1958, the 1959 season was hot and dry and McCool's figures improved: he made 1769 runs at an average of more than 40 runs per innings and took 64 first-class wickets, more than in any other Somerset season. McCool's final season with Somerset before his retirement was 1960, and he signed off with 1,222 runs and 29 wickets. In 138 matches across the five seasons for Somerset, McCool made 7,913 runs at an average of 33.82. He also took 219 wickets at 28.05 but in his five years with the county he was never the first-choice spin bowler: in his first two seasons, Somerset used Australian-born slow left-arm orthodox bowler John McMahon as the main spin bowler, with young off-spin bowler Brian Langford also bowling more than McCool. When McMahon left, Langford took over as the top spin bowler, and by 1960 was bowling four times the number of overs that McCool took. But McCool had also lost some of his control at this stage: "He could do beguiling things with the ball, though length and line seemed to become a decreasing consideration," says the history of Somerset cricket. He also made 146 catches, many of them at first slip, where he stood "rather deeper than usual". His influence on Somerset's recovery from the trough of the early 1950s was considerable. A later Somerset history says: "Occasionally some of the younger pros didn't relish the way he treated them. Maybe they also resented that his salary was well