From the archive
Research by
Jamie CrawleyRIGHT
Chewing gum has
a long history...The Invincibles
Vol 31, No 3, May 29 1948
Don Bradman’s Australia side arrived
in England in the spring of 1948 and
immediately set about scything through
everything in their path. Before they
even got to the straightforward task
of retaining the Ashes, the tourists
proceeded to make a joke of each of the
fi rst-class teams they faced. Through
their fi rst give games, they swept
aside Worcestershire, Leicestershire,
Yorkshire, Surrey and Cambridge,
with only Yorkshire even requiring the
Australians to bat twice. Then o they
went to Southend...
In possibly the most overwhelmingly
dominant display by a visiting team in a
tour game, the Australians bludgeoned
their way to 721 on day one against a
hapless Essex side. The Don made what
would be his highest score of the tour,
187, which he took barely a session to
compile. There were also hundreds for
opener Bill Brown, Sammy Loxton and
reserve wicketkeeper Ron Saggers.
Essex’s attack was impotent at best,
but did feature future England allrounder
Trevor Bailey, then still a student. Bailey
had in fact played for Cambridge against
the Australians at Fenner’s earlier in the
week and indeed hitched a ride down toSouthend on their team bus. Safe to say,
after back to back hammerings, Bailey
must have been sick to the back teeth of
Australians by the end of the week.
He had at least been thrown a bone
by the great Keith Miller. Coming in
with the score 364 for 2, the allrounder
took guard and shouldered arms to the
fi rst ball he received, allowing himself
to be clean bowled by Bailey. Turning
to Essex keeper Frank Rist, Miller said
“Thank God that’s over”, before trooping
cheerfully on his way. Whether Miller
was feeling sympathetic to the young
bowler or completely uninterested by
the massacre, either way it was an action
typical of the man.
Bradman’s attitude was rather
di erent. He regarded the Southend
slaughter as the moment he realised
there was something particularly special
about the team at his command on his
farewell tour.
It was also an eye-opening experience
for Rist, as reported by Norman Preston
in his county round-up for The Cricketer.I saw nearly every stroke of that
memorable record day’s play at Southend
during which the Australians amassed
721, but I feel sure that the impressions of
the Essex wicketkeeper will be of greater
interest than my ‘ring-side’ views. Rist
enjoyed his unenviable, and unique,
experience. Bradman fascinated him by
his perfection of timing and accuracy of
placing while scoring 187 in little morethan two hours. “He left his strokes so
late,” said Rist, “that quite often I found
the ball struck almost out of my hands.
Now and again, he seemed to be worried
by a ball spinning away to the slips, but
before you could say ‘Jack Robinson’ he’d
be outside the o -stump and pulling the
ball past mid-on.
Rist tells a good story of the over in
which the Australian captain hit Price,
former Lancashire left-arm slow bowler
for 20. “Three glorious strokes had gone
fl ashing down to the long-on boundary,”
Rist told me with a rueful smile. “Mr
Pearce moved another man to close the
gap. Straight away, Bradman turned to
me and said: ‘H’m, I’ll have to change my
stroke.’ And he promptly did, for the next
ball, which I thought should have gone
in the same direction was cracked away
through the covers.” Rist, modesty, did
not remind me that he conceded only
seven byes in the huge total, and that four
came o one ball. His knees at the end of
the day, he said, felt like balloons.English cricket was certainly doomed to
feel rather defl ated in the months ahead.
Australia would saunter to a 4-0 victory
in the Test series and become the fi rst
visiting team to complete an entire tour
undefeated, later earning their mythical
status as ‘The Invincibles’.
This was all some way o when this
edition of The Cricketer went to print with
the fi rst Test still a couple of weeks away.
Even at this point, though, it seemed
evident that England were doomed to
play the role of cannon fodder to The
Don’s team.
In much the same way as Australia
dominated the fi rst few series, the fi rst
after the First World War, England were
adversely a ected by the Second rather
more severely than their opponents.
Barely 18 months earlier, Australia had
retained the Ashes on home soil by a 3-0
scoreline, with a team of fresh-faced
cricketers, only a handful of which had
played any Test cricket before the War.
Australia looked like they were just
coming into their own, as compared
to the ageing, war-weary outfi t that
England fi elded.
The 1946/47 tour had taken place a
year earlier than MCC had intended
on account of a plea from the Attorney
General, Dr HR Evatt, wishing to reviveInvincibles, p 54
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