Ashes to Ashes – We look back at the 1948 series

When post-War England thrilled to the tour by Bradman’s Invincibles

Paul Edwards continues his look into the Ashes archive by featuring that most storied of Australian tours which featured the most famous single moment in the history of cricket – the final-innings duck of the man who rarely failed

England in 1948. A country which has won a war yet all but bankrupted itself in doing so; a battered land of shortages and rationing. Although sport offers something of a release, little of it is shown on television and fewer than one in 20 of the adult population has access to a set in any case.

It is the great age of radio and the final Ashes Test is being broadcast from the Oval.What is more, one of the greatest batsmen in the history of the game is walking out to play his final international innings. Then these words:

“And now here’s Hollies to bowl to him from the Vauxhall End. He bowls, Bradman goes back across his wicket and pushes the ball gently in the direction of the Houses of Parliament which are out beyond mid-off. It doesn’t go that far, it merely goes to Watkins at silly mid-off. No run, still 117-1. Two slips, a silly mid-off and a forward short-leg close to him as Hollies pitches the ball up slowly and…he’s bowled.

“Bradman, bowled Hollies, nought. Bowled Hollies, nought. And – what do you say under those circumstances? I wonder if you see the ball very clearly in your last Test in England on a ground where you’ve played some of the biggest cricket of your life, and where the opposing team have just stood round you and given you three rousing cheers and the crowd has clapped you all the way to the wicket. I wonder if you really see the ball at all.”

Nearly 70 years later Eric Hollies’ googly to Bradman and its perfect description by John Arlott overshadow the rest of that 1948 tour. People with little interest in the game’s statistics will be able to tell you it prevented the least average batsman in cricket history from finishing his career with a batting average above 100. One wonders how many Australians have chosen 6996 or 9994 as their pin numbers. Bradman remains the most famous Australian of all, the clearest embodiment of so many of his country’s virtues but with a large dash of hawk-eyed genius thrown in.

That 1948 visit was Bradman’s fourth tour to England and his second as captain. Although not as successful personally as he had been on two of his previous trips – he had to settle for a paltry 508 Test runs at an average of 72 – he led a team which many still regard as the best any country has ever fielded.

Conversations with those who saw that side as adults yielded less rheumy-eyed romanticism than a tough fondness for cricketers like the fast bowler, Ray Lindwall, a master of late outswing, who took 27 wickets in the Tests; or for batsmen like the left-handed opener, Arthur Morris, whose compact elegance earned him 696 runs, including three centuries in nine innings.

Morris used to remind people that he, too, watched Bradman’s last Test innings. “Were you there?” came the question. “Yes, I got 196.”

Then there were the all-round skills of Keith Miller, a former fighter-pilot who lived life in the knowledge that it, too, had been savagely rationed for some of his friends. There was no department of the game, except perhaps spin bowling, in which the Australians were limited. In first-class matches seven batsmen scored over a thousand runs and eight bowlers took over 50 wickets. Miller did both but bagged a golden duck, some say deliberately so, on the famous Saturday at Southchurch Park, Southend, when the Australians made 721 in a day against Essex. “They never accelerated,” said Trevor Bailey. “They just kept plodding along at just under 250 runs per session.”

Australia won the Test series 4-0 and did so against a team possessing perhaps four cricketers who would be picked in any post-war England side. Denis Compton’s 562 runs included two centuries but he could do nothing to change the overall shape of the series. Alec Bedser took 18 wickets and dismissed Bradman in four consecutive Test innings but on the days when the captain failed to make a century, somebody else, Lindsay Hassett or Sid Barnes, for example, usually managed to do so.

The tourists played 34 matches between late April at Worcester and midSeptember at Aberdeen. They won 25 of them and drew the other nine, making the attachment of the epithet “Invincibles” more or less inevitable. The name has stuck, too, being taken as the title of two books about the tour and also being used in the subtitle of Malcolm Knox’s revisionist account, Bradman’s War. The latter work considers how the captain’s ruthlessness, especially against counties recovering from six years in which they had been concentrating on other things, did not always find favour with his own players, let alone his opponents. “When you get in front, nail ’em into the ground,” Miller recalls him saying.

Set against the doubts and disapproval of some fellow cricketers, though, Bradman could cite the reactions of the English cricket-loving public, many of whom sent letters to the Australian captain: “I write as an ordinary English workman who has been privileged to witness the displays of your team and you at Trent Bridge and Lord’s and what a feast of enjoyment and a tonic they have been to me in these rather exacting times,” wrote one correspondent. “Also on returning home the radio commentaries have been so full of interest that we (and I know I speak for other workers) have forgotten about the little less sugar we have in our tea and the shortage of meat on our plate.”

For many of the British public the return of sport was one of the joys of peace. The first home Ashes tour in a decade marked a reclamation of something near wondrous normality. People had celebrated the six centuries of Compton and Bill Edrich against South Africa in 1947 but the presence of the Australians confirmed that they had come through a conflict mightily scathed but unbowed.

And the most effective run-scorer anyone had ever seen had chosen to end his Test career in England.

“To travel throughout England with Bradman is a unique experience,” said the Australian journalist, Andy Flanagan. “Cities, towns and hotels are beflagged, carpets set down and dignitaries wait to extend an official welcome. He is the Prince of Cricketers.” The attendances at the Australians’ games in 1948 revealed the public’s passionate desire to watch cricketers they might otherwise only see in snatches of newsreel in packed cinemas.

There were 32,500 spectators at the three days of the Worcestershire match in late April. The fourth Test was watched by 158,000 people with thousands more locked out of Headingley. Australia scored 404-3 to win the game on the fifth day, Morris making 182 and Bradman 173 not out on a ground where his previous Test scores had been 334, 304, 103 and 16.

The attendance at Scarborough on the Australians’ last day of first-class cricket in England was nearly 17,000; policemen escorted Bradman to the wicket through lines of fans and he made 153 against HDG Leveson-Gower’s XI. Irving Rosenwater, author of the best biography of Bradman, recounts what happened after the match. “That night at the Royal Hotel in Scarborough, where the Australians stayed, a spontaneous and emotional scene took place…As Bradman appeared at the top of the staircase on his way down to dinner, the entire assemblage in the lounge below – cricketers, cricket enthusiasts and ordinary guests – rose to applaud him as he descended the stairs.” A week later 10,000 spectators watched the Australians’ final match, a two-day affair against Scotland at Aberdeen, where Bradman made 123 not out. Then the Australians were invited to Balmoral by King George VI. To read about Ashes tours in the quarter centu

Attendance at Scarborough for the Australian’s last day of first-class cricket was 17,000 and Bradman was escorted by police through fans to the wicket

century after the end of the Second World War is to be reminded of eras in which captains needed both the deft diplomacy of an ambassador and the strategic ruthlessness of a field-marshal. Bradman

revealed both qualities. During the 29-day voyage to England on the Strathaird, he spent

much of his time preparing the speeches he knew he would have to make at dinners and other functions. During the tour he made time to visit schools and was careful that all letters, especially those from children, received a reply. On the field he was merciless, an approach which almost all modern captains would understand and one which had its roots in Bradman’s own Ashes humblings.

Little of this seems to have been discerned by writers following the tour, many of whom lauded Bradman for qualities they admired infrequently in other cricketers. Neville Cardus, who rarely praised a batsman for crease occupation, wrote as follows: “Cricketers in England will rejoice that the last rays of Bradman’s splendour will fall on the greenest fields in the world. He remains the absolute master, harder to get out than ever before…”

RC Robertson-Glasgow, who was most at home at Taunton, the Parks or a village green, momentarily acquired a global perspective when considering Bradman. “We want him to do well. We feel we have a share in him. He is more than Australian. He is a world batsman.”

Meanwhile, the cricket-loving public coped with shortages, bathed in peace and watched the 1948 Australians play cricket they would remember in their dotage. “This will be my last tour abroad and I will do my best to see Australia is well served,” Bradman had told the Victorian Cricket Association before he left for England.

Who can say he failed?