Colin Leslie McCool (9 December 1916 – 5 April 1986) was an Australian cricketer who played in 14 Test matches between 1946 and 1950.

[1] He was part of Donald Bradman's Invincibles team that toured England in 1948 but injury saw him miss selection in any of the Test matches.

[1] A good tour of South Africa in 1949–50 was followed by a lack of opportunity in the next two seasons, leading McCool to sign a contract to play professional cricket in the Lancashire League in 1953.

[1] As a child growing up in Paddington, McCool attended Crown Street State School—earlier students included Victor Trumper and Monty Noble.

[1] He made his first-class début for New South Wales against "Rest of Australia" in March 1940, making 19 and 15 and taking one wicket.

[1] He was selected in the Australian team to tour New Zealand in 1945–46, making his Test début at the Basin Reserve in Wellington.

[12] The following season, Wally Hammond's England cricket team travelled to Australia for the 1946–47 Ashes series.

He just missed out on a century on his Ashes debut, scoring 95 and only bowling one over as Australia won the Test by an innings and 332 runs.

[18][19][20] Wisden Cricketers' Almanack wrote that his batting featured "wristy cuts" and "vigorous hooks", opining that there were "few better players of spin bowling on a difficult pitch".

He took 57 wickets on the tour but bowling for long periods caused him to continually tear a callus on his third finger, used to impart spin on the ball.

[1] As a result, his captain, Don Bradman, felt compelled to leave him out of the Test matches, feeling that his finger would not be able to handle the necessarily long bowling spells.

[1] In 1950–51, McCool was the leading wicket taker in the Sheffield Shield competition, however he was not selected in the Test team against the touring English; nor against the West Indies the following season.

Somerset, having finished on the bottom of the County Championship table for the four years between 1952 and 1955, had embarked on a renewal programme.

Part of the programme involved a vigorous recruiting campaign, including an offer to McCool that saw him return to first-class cricket at the age of 39.

"At the start of the season it was hoped that the former Australian Test leg-break bowler would lend power and variety to the attack.

[33][34] Over the 1956/57 new year, McCool was one of a party of 12 cricketers, all but one of them Test players, who made a brief trip to India to play two first-class matches in celebration of the silver jubilee of the Bengal Cricket Association in a side raised by the Lancashire secretary Geoffrey Howard.

[35] 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.

[44] 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.

[1] A short man but with a strong build, as a batsman he was a vigorous hooker and a wristy cutter, scoring mostly square of the wicket.

"[3] Alan Gibson wrote: "We hardly think of him as a stylist, and he was mostly a back-foot player, getting the greater number of his runs in the segments fanning out from point and square-leg.

"[26] But he also adapted his style to suit English pitches: in an early innings for Somerset, he was out trying to hook a ball from Trevor Bailey.

"The hook, he decided, was a stroke to be used sparingly on English pitches... McCool was constantly amending his technique that season [1956], whenever he spotted a flaw in his method.

[1] Journalist and former team-mate Bill O'Reilly said after McCool's death in 1986: "If Colin had played in the last 10 years, he would have been regarded as one of the greatest all-rounders ever in Australian cricket.

"Although Colin McCool has played for the County for three seasons only, this Testimonial is a fitting reward for his valuable services as an all-rounder and off the field, where his influence is most marked.

"[25] After retirement from first-class cricket at the end of the 1960 season in England, McCool returned to Australia, taking up market gardening with a specialty in rare blooms at Umina Beach on the Central Coast of New South Wales.

[47] John Arlott, reviewing them in Wisden 1962, said the first was "full of trenchant good sense, humour, anecdote and shrewd observation".