Reginald Wood had one of the most unusual Test

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 careers in cricket history, with only Joseph McMaster

Joseph McMaster

Joseph Emile Patrick McMaster is notable as having probably the oddest and shortest first-class cricket career of all-time. He was selected for an under-strength England team that toured South Africa in 1888/9 and was selected as a bowler in the second and final Test match, in Cape Town, starting...

 laying claim to a more unusual one. The son of John Wood, a Birkenhead

Birkenhead

Birkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...

 merchant, and Montreal-born Elizabeth, he was educated at Charterhouse

Charterhouse School

Charterhouse School, originally The Hospital of King James and Thomas Sutton in Charterhouse, or more simply Charterhouse or House, is an English collegiate independent boarding school situated at Godalming in Surrey.Founded by Thomas Sutton in London in 1611 on the site of the old Carthusian...

 and played six matches for Lancashire County Cricket Club

Lancashire County Cricket Club

Lancashire County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Lancashire in cricket's County Championship. The club was founded in 1864 as a successor to Manchester Cricket Club and has played at Old Trafford since then...

 as an amateur before emigrating to Australia. In 1885, he played two matches as a professional for Victoria, and then, when Billy Barnes

Billy Barnes

William Barnes was a professional cricketer who played for Nottinghamshire between 1875 and 1894 and England between 1880 and 1890. In 1890 he was named as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year. Barnes also toured Australia three times and North America once...

 was ruled out of a number of matches in Alfred Shaw

Alfred Shaw

Alfred Shaw was an eminent Victorian cricketer and rugby footballer, who bowled the first ball in Test cricket and was the first to take five wickets in a Test innings . He who organised the first British Isles rugby tour to Australasia in 1888...

's tour of Australia

Australian cricket team

The Australian cricket team is the national cricket team of Australia. It is the joint oldest team in Test cricket, having played in the first Test match in 1877...

 in 1886/7 after Barnes hit a wall rather than Australian captain Percy McDonnell

Percy McDonnell

Percy Stanislaus McDonnell was an Australian cricketer who captained the Australian Test team in six matches, including the tour of England in 1888....

, whom he was aiming for, the Englishmen had to find a replacement quickly. Wood was found and played three matches for Shaw's XI, the second one of which was the Second Test. He did not bowl and batted at number ten, scoring 0 and 6 and after one final game with the touring Englishmen never played first-class cricket

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

again.