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Morris, Loxton baggy greens up for auction

3 minute read

A private collector has put the baggy green caps of Arthur Morris and Sam Loxton, who were both part of Don Bradman's 1948 Invincibles, up for auction.

SHANE WARNE Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

The baggy green caps of Invincibles Arthur Morris and Sam Loxton are up for grabs, with Lloyds Auctions hopeful both treasured pieces of cricket memorabilia become part of a public exhibition.

Shane Warne's baggy green, auctioned as part of the Red Cross bushfire appeal, attracted global interest and was sold to Commonwealth Bank for $1,007,500.

Warne's cap is set to be on permanent display at the Bradman Museum in Bowral.

Lloyds is upbeat that online auctions for the baggy greens of Morris, who was Australia's leading run-scorer on their undefeated tour of England in 1948, and Loxton deliver a similar result for cricket fans.

"I'm an accredited valuer and if I'm looking at something like this and trying to put a price on it, I look at a recent sale," Amanda Benson, head of fine art and antiquities for Lloyds said.

"Recently Shane Warne's baggy green sold for over a million. He's a very well-known cricketer.

"These are two caps from the Invincibles, which is arguably the greatest Australian cricket team of all time.

"It's hard to (predict a price), but what we would love to see is a large corporation buy them and donate them to a public collection."

The current owner of both caps is a private collector who is terminally ill and looking to provide for his family.

Morris made his Sheffield Shield debut at age 18, scoring centuries in both innings at the SCG.

Gates at the SCG's Driver Avenue entrance were named in the former Test captain's honour in 2015, the same year he died at age 93.

Morris was posthumously inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2017.

Loxton, who died aged 90 in 2011, played 12 Tests and was a true allrounder.

He served with a tank unit in World War II, played in the VFL, was a member of the Victorian parliament and captained his state in the Shield.

Loxton quit as national selcetor after the 1981 underarm incident, which prompted him to tell Greg Chappell that "you might have won the match but you've lost a lot of friends".