The "Invincibles", The Greatest Ashes Side Ever
As the eagerly-awaited first Ashes Test gets underway at Edgbaston this weekend, we look back 75 years to Don Bradman’s last tour to England
It was 1948 and “The Don” was approaching 40. This is the story of “The Invincibles,” one of the greatest teams to ever tour England.
THE last test cricket England and Australia played before the world plunged into the Second World War was a disaster for the Aussies in general and skipper Don Bradman in particular.
England batted first in the fifth Test of the 1938 series at The Oval, scoring 903 for seven declared. Len Hutton scored 364, the left-handed Yorkshireman, Maurice Leyland 187 and the elegant Joe Hardstaff junior scored one of his four Test centuries in compiling 169.
Australia chased so much leather they ground their boot studs down by a couple of millimetres. In the field they bickered and sulked like children. England’s innings was so large that Australia conceded a cheeky half-century of extras.
Left-arm spinner and googly bowler Leslie O’Brien Fleetwood-Smith’s figures were from the realms of a comedy skit or a Christmas pantomime: 87-11-298-1 – that’s what the current South African Test side scores in a better-than-average innings.
Otherwise known as “Chuck”, at least Fleetwood-Smith had the minor consolation of getting Wally Hammond out; then again, those kinds of figures aren’t going to impress even the most impressionable grandchildren. They know a caning when they see it.
The Oval Test was the last of Fleetwood-Smith’s ten for Australia. After that, he was chucked unceremoniously under the proverbial bus, never to be seen or heard of again.
Chasing leather meant being in the field until after lunch of the fourth day (one day, a Sunday, was lost to rest and worship) and seven Aussie bowlers turned over their arms. The two occasional bowlers were Lindsay Hassett and Bradman himself. The little Don bowled 2.2 overs before twisting his ankle so badly that he was carted off to hospital for an X-ray for a suspected fracture.
The injury was bad enough that Bradman didn’t bat in the Australian first innings of 201. Neither did he bat in the Australian follow-on innings of 123 as England won the Test – so drawing the series – by an innings and 579 runs.
A year later and the world was plunged into war and “cannon fodder” took on an entirely different meaning. Ten years elapsed between the Australians’ innings defeat in the fifth Test at the Oval and their first post-war return in 1948 and, if Australian wounds weren’t still raw, their memories of Chuck’s one-for-298 were pretty much intact. Bradman was a smart man. He slipped these carbon-backed memories into the filing system of his mind. Like an elephant, he didn’t forget.
As it happens, the Aussies didn’t lose the 1938 series. They were the holders of the Ashes going into it and although the first two Tests in 1938 were drawn and the third was abandoned without a ball being bowled, they won the fourth.
It was enough to retain the Ashes but Bradman bristled at what had happened in the fifth. No-one likes losing by an innings and 579 runs. It’s a difficult one to hide on your resume and it’s the kind of thing wise-ass strangers standing in the bank queue on a Tuesday morning have a nasty habit of reminding you about. “Hey, Don, tell us about those two overs, bud?”
There was an additional complication: because the war came along, the memory of the Test became strangely distended because no scalding victories came after it. The smell of innings defeat lingered down through the years, like something whiffy on the sole of your shoe.
Given the humiliations of 1938, Bradman wanted to take Australia to England in 1948 but he was approaching 40 and wondered whether his body was up to it. He was plagued by ill-health. His dental problems were legendary. He developed a heart flutter. There were bouts of post-War gastro-enteritis and he suffered from a dickey shoulder. He had aches, sprains and tears that would have put your average fast-bowler to shame.
And he was not a happy traveller, so that needed to be borne in mind. He was not at his best in the air. Neither was he at his best at sea, suffering from epic bouts of sea-sickness. The voyage from Fremantle in Western Australia to Tilbury on the Thames would take about three-and-a-half weeks.
Where was he best? In his rocking chair back home in the Adelaide suburb of Kensington Park? Playing the piano? Stroking the cat? Working on his golf game, at which he was good and rapidly improving?
There was fretting and hand-wringing, and discussions with Jessie, his always-supportive wife. Could he really afford to leave his fledgling stock-broking business behind? And what of the couple’s daughter, who was cerebrally challenged? Could Bradman afford to take the risk of being away from home for so long?
Bradman’s champion hypochondria aside, the unfinished business from the Oval Test of 1938 meant that he really had no alternative but to go ten years later. After announcing his retirement from home Tests after the series against India the previous Australian summer, it became clear he would captain the team to England. With the same dogged attention to detail with which he went about scoring runs, Bradman started to prepare for the tour.
All protocols must be observed off the field, but there was to be no mercy on it. No matter against whom they played, the 1948 Australians would grind their opposition down to such an extent that by the time the Tests came round England would be on the psychological defensive.
Yet this is too pat a formulation, because while Bradman himself was intent on revenge, he was intent on revenge within the context of being a changed man. In a word, he had mellowed. Charles Williams, his biographer, writes admiringly that in the immediate post-War years Bradman’s “trilby hat was worn at a jauntier angle”.
During his final home series’ against India, Bradman even found time to visit the Indian dressing-room after the day’s play and diplomatically suggest to the Indians where they’d gone wrong and how they might improve.
Bradman’s features had softened, writes Williams, and although some of the maladies and ailments remained, he was generally a more relaxed and content figure post-War than he’d been before it. He needed all the social aplomb and savoir faire he could muster after docking at Tilbury on the liner Strathaird on April 15, 1948 because the Australians were feted as Imperial heroes and immediately swamped. They were inundated with social engagements, appearances and speaking requests, and pressed and harried like celebrities.
They were even entertained by the King and Queen at their castle in Balmoral, where Bradman was asked his opinion on matters of the day. To everyone’s puzzlement the King wore a kilt. It must have been tempting not to laugh. There were no such social or sartorial lapses from the Boy from Bowral.
To some extent Bradman had planned for the fact that his men would be feted as part of the post-War gathering of Empire. The team had signed 5000 autographs each on the voyage from Western Australia, but these were quickly frittered away.
Autograph signing on board ship has given rise to one of the tour’s more amusing anecdotes. Ernie Toshack, the late-developing left-arm seam bowler, apparently tired of signing the sheets Bradman had prescribed and handed duties over to a friend. Spelling was not the friend’s strong suit and many of Toshack’s signatures ended up being spelled T-O-S-H-A-K, without the “c” in other words. I wonder what they’re worth?
Along with practise, there were to be ten days of hectic social engagements (including an appearance before the Cricket Writers’ Club and a night out in the West End to see Annie Get your Gun) before the traditional tour opener against Worcestershire at Worcester.
England in 1948 was still covered in the gloom and coal dust of post-War austerity. The Australians brought with them food parcels which they handed over to the Labour Minister of Food, John Strachey, the Labour Party having swept to power in a landslide 1945 election.
It was impressed upon the colonial guests that because England was still in the midst of post-War rationing, Bradman and his cricketers would have to follow suit. Portion sizes would be small. There was to be nothing decadent or excessive. Come dinner-time it was to be sackcloth and ashes rather than caviar, champagne and swinging from the chandeliers.
There were, however, runs aplenty: 462 for eight declared against Worcestershire in the opening game; 448 against Leicestershire in the second, before a low-scoring blip against Yorkshire in the third in which the Aussies’ still managed to scrape home by four wickets.
Business resumed in match four, with the Australians scoring 632 against Surrey. In match five they dawdled their way 414 for four against Cambridge University without so much as breaking sweat. Bradman loved it when a plan came together.
In game six, the Australians really began to find their mojo. Against Essex at Southend in the middle of May Essex bowled them out in a day, except for the fact that Bradman’s men scored 721. There were four Aussie hundreds in all, to Bill Brown, Ron Saggers, Sam Loxton and Bradman himself.
Bradman showed restraint. He only made 187 and this in a shade over two hours. Williams quotes him as saying that throughout the 1948 tour he never went for the second hundred. 187? That’s awfully close.
Essex were bowled out for 83 and 187, Toshack taking seven in the match and Ian Johnson, six with his offies. All of the Australians played their part to perfection – except Keith Miller. He allowed himself to be bowled by Trevor Bailey for a duck because he wasn’t prepared to be privy to what he called the Essex “slaughter.”
Miller’s view was that Bradman should have allowed some of the younger or more marginal members of the team to play against Essex, who were both a weak and an unfashionable team. After Bailey had taken the Australian all-rounder’s wicket he commented to Bradman that Miller didn’t seem to be much interested. Bradman, salty as ever, is reputed to have quipped “he’ll learn”.
After the prolonged softening up of the counties, the Tests begun with the opener at Trent Bridge in June. When Hardstaff, the Oval centurion from back in 1938 was out for a duck in the England first innings, the hosts were in bother at four for 46. Despite Jim Laker’s 63 and Alec Bedser’s 22, England could only muster 165, to which Australia replied with a painstaking 509 scored at no more than 2.35 runs to the over. Chief scorers in their total were Bradman (with 138) and captain-elect Hassett (with 137).
England replied with a big century from Denis Compton and scores from Len Hutton and Godfrey Evans. It ensured that Australia needed to bat again but they were at the crease for less than 30 overs in racking up the 98 needed for victory. With it they went 1-up in the series.
Bradman was caught Hutton bowled Bedser twice in Trent Bridge Test and this led England to hatch a plan. Instead of a leg slip, it was thought that a backward short-leg would be more likely to catch Don out when he was faced with Bedser’s in-swinger.
The architect of the plan was none other than Bill O’Reilly. When he’d played under Bradman for Australia pre-War, O’Reilly and his mate, Jack Fingleton, had been amongst Bradman’s most vociferous critics. Now here he was, in England as a journalist, helping out the opposition. Bedser listened to O’Reilly and thought he was onto something; Norman Yardley, the England skipper, thought Bedser was onto something too; suddenly all of England thought they had cracked the Bradman code.
There was great expectation, therefore, going into the second Test at Lord’s two weeks later. Bradman won the toss and chose to bat. Imagine England’s election when the Don was out for a scratchy 38, scored in 104 balls, again caught Hutton bowled Bedser.
How England rejoiced and her fans rejoiced with her. With a hobbled Bradman, England might just wrest the Ashes away from the Aussies.
Despite Bradman going for 38, Australia mustered 350, a handy score given that at one stage they were 225 for six. Down the order wicket-keeper Tallon scored 53 to be ninth out as the tail wagged.
For England Bedser took four for 100 in 43 overs with 14 maidens. He didn’t bowl a wide or a no-ball. Years later, on tour of Australia, his skipper, Hutton, told him he was too convivial with the opposition. Bedser is said to have replied that he liked Australians and judged that it didn’t hamper his performance. Hutton dropped him all the same.
In reply to Aussies’ 350, England could only scrimp and scrape 215. Bill Edrich took seventy minutes to score five. Only Compton passed fifty.
It got worse, because Australian sailed clear away from them in their second innings. Sid Barnes and Arthur Morris, the Aussie openers, put on 122 for the opening wicket and Barnes and Bradman put on a partnership of 174 for the second.
Bedser again accounted for Bradman, the fourth time in four innings, but by that time Bradman had already made 89 and the damage had been done. Australia declared on 470 for seven, Barnes top-scoring with 141. Bradman was the workhorse Bedser’s only wicket. England needed 596 to prevent Australia from going 2-0 up in the series.
They didn’t get close, being bowled out for 186. Wickets fell with the frequency of trains leaving Euston station, Toshack, the man who had given over his autograph-signing duties to a serial mis-speller, taking five for forty. Bowling left-arm over at decent pace, he was one of the best-loved members of the side. His swarthy good looks earned him the nickname “the film star.” He and Miller were loved by the ladies.
England did far better in the third Test at Old Trafford. They batted first and rallied around Compton’s 145 not out to post a more-than-handy 363. Their good start got even better when Bedser and Dick Pollard shared seven Aussie first innings wickets between them. Pollard accounted for Bradman – leg before for seven – to have the tourists all out for 221, a lead of 142.
After skittling out the visitors, England spent the rest of Saturday extending their lead. Thanks to Cyril Washbrook’s 85 not out they declared at the close of play on 174 for three, meaning Australia needed 317 runs to take an unassailable 3-0 lead in the series.
The following day was a Sunday, so no play was possible. No play was possible on the Monday either, this time to rain and bad weather.
Expectation ran high at the beginning of the final day’s play on the Tuesday. The start was delayed due to the Manchester rain; the umpires walked out, inspected, rubbed their hands together, and walked back in. Finally, just after lunch, it was deemed light enough to start the final day’s play.
The little action there was happened early. With the Australian total on ten, opener Ian Johnson went for six. A chink of light for England. Would they be able to wedge their foot firmly in the door?
Next in was Bradman. He joined Morris, the scorer of Australia’s only first innings fifty. Slowly, deliberately, the door was closed. Australia lost only one wicket in the day, facing 61 overs in scoring 92 for one; Bedser bowled 19 overs for 27 runs.
Williams puts it best: “It was perhaps the least typical and most important of all Bradman’s Test innings. He was playing as captain of Australia rather than Bradman. In his last forty-two minutes he scored only two runs – almost unheard-of in his entire career. Only one ball from Bedser got past his bat. It was a model of defensive batting on a wet wicket. He had saved the game.”
If Old Trafford was an unlucky ground for Bradman, Headingley in Leeds, the venue for the fourth Test, was generally a lucky one. England batted first, bringing their good batting form with them from Manchester to post 496.
Australia replied with 458, a young left-hander called Neil Harvey scoring his first Test century against England. The fourth day was England’s. Some thought Yardley might declare late on the fourth afternoon for a dart at the Aussie openers but he kept on batting. Neither did he declare overnight.
Williams thinks he batted on because he wanted use of the heavy roller, to which he wouldn’t have been entitled had he declared overnight. Whatever the reason – and surely Yardley batted on because he wanted to ensure that England couldn’t lose – many felt he batted for too long. Maybe he was anxious about his spin bowling options? The day was sunny and the pitch excellent for batting. He had reason to be circumspect.
Bradman records in his diary that when he arrived at the crease half an hour before lunch after Hassett’s dismissal, his thoughts were unclear. He wanted to win, yes, but he didn’t want to win badly enough to expose the team to the threat of losing.
If he didn’t want to win badly enough to expose his team to the threat of losing, he clearly didn’t want to win badly enough? So what was it to be? Bradman’s unease suggests Yardley might have found a sweet spot in batting on and pitching England’s declaration as he did.
Then again, Yardley might not have been quite as commanding as he at first appeared. While Bradman was busy being “unclear”, a strange state of affairs for someone usually so lucid, Yardley brought on Hutton, a part-time spinner at best.
It was not a strategic masterstroke. In a nice example of pre-lunch whetting of their appetite, Bradman and Morris put on 62 runs in the half-hour before lunch.
After lunch, they tucked in again, having a sort of post-lunch banquet. Perhaps it was a pre-tea snack? As the afternoon progressed, they helped themselves, a veritable feeding frenzy. Or should that be a run fest. Or should that be run feast? Who knows?
The England total soon hove into view but Braddles – as he was sometimes known – was cramping. The Williams book tells us that Morris was asked to take more than his fair share of the bowling. They had already helped themselves. What more was there to do? There would soon be no more runs on offer.
The statistics of Australia’s chase, on a tour during which records tumbled, are compelling. Morris and Bradman put on 301 runs for the second wicket, Morris feasting to the tune of 182, Bradman quaffing 173 of them. In the end, Australia won by seven wickets with 15 minutes to spare.
England’s part-timers, Hutton and Compton, went for 112 runs in 19 combined overs. Yardley appeared to have mis-judged. Australia were 3-0 up and would go on to take the fifth Test at the Oval by an innings and 149 runs, after bowling England out for 52 in their first innings. It had taken ten years but the cricket wheel had turned full circle. Ten days after the conclusion of the fifth Test Bradman turned 40. It was a job well done.
I have a healthy disrespect for statistics – everyone should have – but allow me to indulge myself in a few. Australia didn’t lose a game on the 1948 tour, leading to them being dubbed “The Invincibles.” Bradman, who expressly forbade himself to score double centuries on tour, nevertheless scored 11 hundreds, Tests included, and 2428 runs all told.
The next-highest aggregate run scorer was Morris, who scored 1922 runs and seven centuries. All in all 47 centuries were scored by the visitors. No-one played in more than Bradman’s 23 matches all told. Perhaps accusations of hypochondria were over-stated?
As we are flooded by thoughts of the opening Ashes Test at Edgbaston this weekend, permit me a few reflections. As I write the silly season is in full swing, with Mark Butcher weighing in on Moeen Ali’s recall and Andrew McDonald having his ha’penny’s worth on Jack Leach’s stress fracture. Perhaps the two are different side of the same media roundabout?
I’ll say this. Australia look very polished to me. Despite David Warner’s middling record away from home, Australia’s batting looks intimidating. Travis Head is one of the form batters of the world game, having scored around two-and-a-half thousand Test runs at an average of 47. Their middle-order balance, with Cameron Green and Alex Carey, looks similarly compelling, and the idea of four out-and-out bowlers is just about right. Josh Hazlewood might not even make the side for the first Test because Scott Boland doesn’t deserve to be dropped after his performance against India.
England don’t sit in my mind’s eye quite as solidly. Ben Stokes is a little crocked. And I worry about Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson, their summers might be coming to an end. This said, can Australia keep the intensity going? Will they be as strong at the end as they are likely to be at the beginning? We shall see in the months to come.