Jeffrey Hallebone

Jeffrey "Jeff" Hallebone (born 3 August 1929) is a former Australian cricketer who played at first-class level for Victoria between 1952 and 1955. He is best known for his accomplishment of scoring a double century on his first-class debut, which made him the third Australian to accomplish that feat, and as of 2015^[update] the last to do so.

Hallebone was born in East Coburg, a suburb of Melbourne, to Dorothy Jessie (née Renshaw) and Edward Stephen Hallebone. He went to school in Geelong, attending Geelong High School before going on to Geelong College, where he played both cricket and football, for his final two years. During the 1948–49 season, Hallebone began playing for the South Melbourne Cricket Club in the Victorian grade cricket competition. He finished the season having played in all 15 matches, although his 17 innings yielded only two half-centuries. In his second season, however, he led South Melbourne's batting aggregates, with 459 runs from 13 matches.

Against Northcote in December 1951, during the 1951–52 season, Hallebone scored 179 runs out of a team total of 359. Less than two weeks after that innings, he was named twelfth man for Victoria's Sheffield Shield match against Queensland. Later in the season, in February 1952, Hallebone was named in the state team for a non-Sheffield Shield match against Tasmania, which had first-class status. Aged 22 on debut at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, he came in sixth in Victoria's first innings, and scored 202 runs before being dismissed by Noel Diprose. His innings included a 343-run fifth-wicket partnership with Richard Maddocks (who scored 271), which remains a Victorian first-class record as of August 2015^[update]. Hallebone became the second Victorian (after Sam Loxton), the third Australian (after Norman Callaway and Loxton), and the seventh player overall to score a double century on his first-class debut. He is the most recent Australian to have achieved the feat, which has only been performed seven more times since his innings.