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1948. Bradman and The Invincibles - Part 2

by Evan Whitton by Evan Whitton, author of Serial Liars: How Lawyers Get the Money (Lulu 2005). (Sydney Sun-Herald | October 30, 1994 )

 

'Best ------- ball I've bowled all season, and they're clapping him!' Eric Hollies, Saturday 14 August 1948

 

Bradman, nearly 40, took a team of invincibles to England in 1948. Neil Harvey (b. 1928) was the youngest; S.J.E. (Slamming Sammy) Loxton (b. 1921), was second youngest. Harvey kept getting out for low scores but was 'not game' to speak to the captain; he asked Loxton to ask Bradman what he was doing wrong. The oracle spoke; Loxton relayed the answer: 'I can't tell him anything because he can bat, but if he keeps the ball down he can't get out.'

 

A new law, that a new ball could be taken after 55 overs rather than 200 runs, suited Australia: Lindwall and Miller formed their best express attack since Ted MacDonald (1891-1937) and Jack

 

Gregory (1895-1973) in the 1920s. J.J. Warr (b. 1927), onetime England fast bowler, said of Lindwall: 'I suppose if one were granted one last wish in cricket it would be the sight of Ray Lindwall opening the bowling in a Test Match from the Nursery end at Lord's.'

 

Lindwall told John Lingard in 1994 that Bradman could read a batsman and tell you how to bowl to him, but he did it obliquely, as with Bill Edrich, who tended to play across the line, at Lord's in 1948. Lindwall habitually placed a short leg behind the square leg umpire. When Edrich came in, Bradman asked Lindwall: 'Do you want that short leg behind or in front of the umpire?'

'No, leave him there,' Lindwall said.

 

He bowled a couple to Edrich and would have had him caught by the short leg if he had taken Bradman's hint. He asked Bradman if he should move the fielder.

 

'It's too late now,' Bradman said; 'he won't play that shot again.' Edrich played against Australia for another five years; Lindwall says he always had him in trouble as a result of Bradman's tip.

 

Lindwall recalls that the team attended a black tie function while a match was in progress, and that three of the bowlers on duty, himself, Colin McCool and Ern Toshach, were then invited to a party 15 miles out of London. They had to make three separate cab trips to get there; this persuaded them to stay at the party rather than attempt a complicated trip back in the early hours of the morning. When they did get back, still in dinner suits, they went up the hotel stairs in case Bradman was in the lift, but met him doing his exercises. The great man said no more than: 'Have a nice night? You had better do all right today.'

 

They had a shower and took the field. Bradman bowled the three of them all morning; each took three wickets. Lindwall was on the rubbing table at lunch when Bradman 'smacked me on the behind' and said: 'You were pretty lucky today.'

 

'Why? We got them all out.'

 

'If you hadn't I would have liked to see the three of you bowling all afternoon.'

 

Australia won the first Test by eight wickets (Bradman 138), the second by 409, and retained the Ashes by drawing the third. The fourth, at Headingley, Leeds, provided an appropriate coda for Bradman's career. England, captained by Norman Yardley, got 496 and looked like breaking a 10-year drought when they had Australia 3 for 68. A harmless enough quick bowler, Bob Pollard (1912-85), bowled Bradman for 33 with a perfectly straight ball that did nothing in the air or off the pitch. Keith Miller, who was batting at the time, was surprised; he didn't think it was possible to bowl Bradman with a straight ball. However, there were no sightscreens, and he assumed that Bradman lost the ball in the crowd.

 

Australia made 458 (Harvey 112, Loxton 93, including five sixes, Lindwall 77. Yardley batted on for a few minutes on the fifth day, Tuesday 27 July, so he could use of the heavy roller to further break up the pitch, and then declared at 8 for 365. This set Australia 404 to win in 344 minutes on a pitch that had already been plundered of 1319 runs and was taking spin. No team had ever got 400 in the fourth innings to win a Test match; indeed, only two teams had ever made more than 250 in the fourth innings of a Test in England.

 

'I fear we may be defeated,' Bradman wrote in his diary. He told baggage man Bill Ferguson to have the team bus back at the ground by mid-afternoon.

 

England had three proper bowlers, Pollard, Alec Bedser and off-spinner Jim Laker (1922-1986), and part-timers Bill Edrich, Ken Cranston (b. 1917), Yardley and Denis Compton, who bowled a left-arm googly called the Chinaman. Bradman later felt Australia would not have got 250 if England had picked a leg-spinner like Doug Wright (b. 1914) or Eric Hollies (1912-81). To win, Australia had to bat at a rate of 70.465116 runs per hour. In the event 109.1 overs were bowled, so the rate per over turned out to be 3.7030247. The computer in Bradman's head could no doubt handle the decimals in either calculation. The left-hander, Arthur Morris, and Lindsay Hassett opened the Australian innings at 11.44 am. Hassett seemed to be playing for a draw and they got only 44, including 14 from Laker's first over, in the first hour.

 

Back in January of that year, Denzil Batchelor, who had been studying Bradman since 1930, observed Trevor Allan's Wallabies beat England 11-0 at Twickenham; his account of it in Days Without Sunset still seems to me the finest report of a Rugby match. Now Batchelor reported to The Sydney Morning Herald that the arrival of Compton 'gave the subfusc game a blush of colour. Morris, who retained his bat for aggressive purpose despite his Roman resolution in defence, on-drove and cover-drove Compton with majestic ruthlessness. Then came a breathtaking moment. Morris swung at Compton's lofted spinner, missed by a wide swath of air, and toppled in his crease. Simultaneously, [Godfrey] Evans [b. 1920] snatched at the ball, juggled helplessly with it, and spilled it on the ground - for all the world like a priceless Ming vase lying in smithereens as the result of the ministrations of a careless housemaid.'

Luckily for Australia, Compton got rid of Hassett, 15, caught and bowled, and Bradman came to the crease at 1 pm with the score at one for 57. The rate for the remaining 4 1/2 hours was now 77.1 recurring per hour. Batchelor saw the attack, apart from Bedser, as 'banal and purposeless', but Bradman had an attack of fibrositis and was in some difficulty. Fortunately for him, that tragic man, Jack Crapp (1912-81), was at slip.