The 1940s

Cricket controversies from 1940 to 1949

30 incidents documented

Bradman's Farewell Duck — Hollies Bowls Him for 0 at The Oval, 1948

England v Australia

1948-08-14

On 14 August 1948 at The Oval, Don Bradman walked out to bat in his final Test innings needing only four runs to retire with a Test average of exactly 100. Eric Hollies bowled him a leg-break first ball, which Bradman defended; the second was a googly that he failed to read; it slipped between bat and pad and clipped middle and off. The Don had made a duck. The crowd rose to him; the average settled forever at 99.94, the most famous number in cricket.

#bradman#ashes#1948

⭐Serious

Bradman's 173* — Headingley 404 Chase, July 1948

England v Australia

1948-07-27

On the final day of the Headingley Test of 1948, Australia were set 404 in 345 minutes on a worn fifth-day pitch — a target no side in the history of Test cricket had ever chased. Bradman (173 not out) and Arthur Morris (182) put on 301 in 217 minutes, often against three England spinners and two erratic part-timers used because Yardley wanted a result. Australia won by seven wickets with 12 minutes to spare. It remained the highest successful fourth-innings chase in Test cricket for 28 years and was Bradman's last Test century.

#bradman#ashes#1948

⭐Serious

Lindwall 6/20 — England 52 All Out at The Oval, 1948

England v Australia

1948-08-14

On the first day of the final 1948 Ashes Test, Ray Lindwall produced what Don Bradman called 'the most devastating and one of the fastest spells I ever saw in Test cricket'. Lindwall took 6/20 in 16.1 overs, including a post-lunch burst of 5/8 in 8.1 overs, as England were dismissed for 52 — at the time their lowest Test total at home since 1888. Hutton's 30 was the only score above 6. The collapse set up Bradman's farewell duck and the series clean sweep.

#ray-lindwall#ashes#1948

⭐Serious

Vijay Hazare's 116 and 145 at Adelaide — January 1948

Australia v India

1948-01-23

Against an Australian total of 674 — built on Bradman 201 and Hassett 198 not out — Vijay Hazare made 116 and 145 in successive innings to become the first Indian to score twin centuries in a Test. He did so against Lindwall and Miller at their fastest, watching wickets fall constantly at the other end (six teammates failed to score across his second-innings 145), and earned an oft-quoted compliment from Bradman about his batting. India still lost by an innings and 16, but Hazare's innings remain a touchstone of Indian batsmanship.

#vijay-hazare#adelaide#1948

⭐Serious

Bradman 201 at Adelaide — Last Home Test Double Hundred, January 1948

Australia v India

1948-01-23

On 23-24 January 1948 at the Adelaide Oval, Don Bradman made 201 against India — his last Test double hundred and his final Test innings on Australian soil over fifty. Coming after his 100th first-class hundred at Sydney in November 1947, the innings cemented the post-war Bradman as a different kind of batsman: less feverishly fast-scoring, more patient, but no less ruthless against attacks short of front-line bowlers.

#bradman#adelaide#1948

⭐Serious

Vinoo Mankad's All-Round Tour of Australia — 1947-48

India v Australia

1948-02-06

Vinoo Mankad's first overseas tour was a masterclass of all-round cricket. On the 1947-48 tour of Australia he scored 583 Test runs at 44.84 (centuries in the third and fifth Tests at Melbourne, 116 and 111), took 17 Test wickets with his slow left-arm, ran out Bill Brown twice for backing up too far at the non-striker's end — coining the now-famous term 'Mankading' — and finished with over 1,400 first-class runs and 50 wickets across the trip.

#vinoo-mankad#india#1947

⭐Moderate

Don Tallon Behind the Stumps — Bradman's Best, 1948

Australia v England

1948-08-18

Donald Tallon, the silent Queenslander, kept wicket throughout the 1948 Invincibles tour of England with a precision Don Bradman called 'the finest I have seen'. His most celebrated moment came at The Oval in August 1948, when he dived left-handed down the leg side to glove a Hutton glance off Lindwall and end England's 52 all out — Wisden's 'great finish to Australia's splendid performance'. Tallon was named one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year for 1949.

#don-tallon#wicketkeeper#australia

⭐Serious

Sid Barnes Felled at Short Leg — Old Trafford, July 1948

Australia v England

1948-07-09

On 9 July 1948 at Old Trafford, the Australian opener Sid Barnes — fielding in his usual position barely five yards from the bat at short leg — was struck a fearful blow in the ribs by a full-blooded pull from Dick Pollard off Ian Johnson. Frank Chester, the umpire, said the ball hit him 'like a bullet'. Barnes 'dropped like a fallen tree' (Fingleton) and had to be carried from the field by four policemen. Ten days in Manchester Royal Infirmary followed; the injury effectively ended his tour as a major contributor.

#sid-barnes#old-trafford#1948

⭐Serious

Glamorgan's First County Championship — 1948

Glamorgan v Hampshire (title-clinching match), Cardiff Arms Park

1948-08-25

On 25 August 1948 at Cardiff Arms Park, Glamorgan beat Hampshire by an innings and 24 runs to clinch the County Championship for the first time in their 27-year first-class history. Wilf Wooller, who had taken over as captain-secretary the year before, lifted the trophy in front of a delirious Welsh crowd. Glamorgan are the only Welsh county to have won the championship; their 1948 title was built on rugby-style fielding, low-budget improvisation (a portable mangle for drying the outfield) and a band of professionals nobody else wanted.

#glamorgan#county-championship#1948

⭐Serious

Compton's 3,816 Runs and 18 Hundreds — The 1947 Record Summer

Middlesex / England — Denis Compton

1947-09-13

In the dry, sunny English summer of 1947, Denis Compton scored 3,816 first-class runs at 90.85 with 18 centuries — both records that have stood for nearly 80 years and, with the modern fixture list, are widely considered unbreakable. His Middlesex partner Bill Edrich made 3,539 runs with 12 hundreds in the same summer, the second-highest of all time. Their batting carried Middlesex to the County Championship and lifted England to a 3-0 Test series win over South Africa. Compton was the Brylcreem Boy who turned austerity Britain back towards joy.

#denis-compton#1947#middlesex

⭐Serious

Bradman's 100th First-Class Hundred — SCG, 15 November 1947

An Australian XI v India

1947-11-15

On 15 November 1947 at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Don Bradman became the first Australian — and the first non-Englishman — to make 100 first-class centuries. He reached the milestone with a single off the off-spin of Gogumal Kishenchand, a player Lala Amarnath had brought on for that very over despite Kishenchand having bowled barely an over all tour. Bradman went on to 172 in 177 minutes; he would finish his first-class career with 117 hundreds, a figure no Australian has approached since.

#bradman#100-hundreds#scg

⭐Serious

Compton & Edrich Add 370 at Lord's — June 1947

England v South Africa

1947-06-23

On 23 June 1947 at Lord's, Denis Compton (208) and Bill Edrich (189) added 370 for the third wicket against South Africa, in a Test that crowned the most adored summer English cricket has known. Their partnership remains the highest for any wicket in a Lord's Test, and the highest for England's third wicket in any Test. Of 47 boundaries shared, 46 were fours; their batting in the warm post-war sunshine was, in Wisden's phrase, 'the talk of London'.

#compton#edrich#lords

⭐Serious

Lala Amarnath Leads Independent India to Australia — 1947-48

India v Australia

1947-11-28

Lala Amarnath became Independent India's first Test captain when he led the tour party to Australia in November 1947, only weeks after Partition. Vijay Merchant's withdrawal had thrown the captaincy open; Amarnath was confirmed by the new Indian Cricket Board ahead of departure. India lost the series 0-4, but Amarnath's personal contributions — 228 not out v Victoria and 172 not out v Queensland — and his courteous handling of Bradman's century moment at Sydney made him a popular figure on tour.

#lala-amarnath#india#captain

⭐Serious

Wally Hammond's Last Test — Sydney, March 1947

Australia v England

1947-02-28

Wally Hammond, England captain on the 1946-47 Ashes tour, was struck down by fibrositis at Adelaide and could not take the field for the fifth Test at Sydney from 28 February 1947. Norman Yardley led England in his place. Hammond never played another Test. The series — Bradman's first post-war — ended 3-0 to Australia, and the greatest English batsman of the inter-war years left Test cricket without a farewell innings, soon emigrating to South Africa.

#wally-hammond#retirement#sydney

🏏Moderate

The Original Mankad — Vinoo Mankad, 1947

Australia vs India

13-17 December 1947

Vinoo Mankad ran out Bill Brown at the non-striker's end during India's tour of Australia, creating a dismissal type that would bear his name for decades.

#mankad#vinoo mankad#bill brown

🔥Serious

Bradman Stands Firm on 28 — The Brisbane Bump-Ball Controversy, 1946

Australia v England

1946-11-29

On the first day of the 1946-47 Ashes, Don Bradman — making his Test return after eight years and visibly out of touch on 28 — chopped a ball from Bill Voce that flew chest-high to Jack Ikin at second slip. England appealed for the catch; umpire George Borwick gave it not out, ruling the ball had bumped from the ground. Bradman did not walk. He went on to make 187, England were beaten by an innings and 332, and Hammond's relationship with the Australian captain never recovered. The wicket-that-never-was framed the entire series.

#bradman#ashes#1946-47

⭐Serious

Brisbane Sticky Wicket — England Bowled Out for 141 and 172, Dec 1946

Australia v England

1946-12-04

Australia's first Test match after the war, at the Gabba in late November 1946, ended in an innings-and-332-run hammering of England — the largest defeat in Ashes history. A pre-monsoon thunderstorm on the third evening turned the wicket into a glue-pot, and Keith Miller (7 for 60) and Ernie Toshack (6 for 82) made it unplayable for an England side already wrung out from chasing Bradman's 187 and Hassett's 128 in a total of 645. The match is also remembered for the bump-ball decision that kept Bradman in on 28 — itself filed under a separate iconic-moment entry — and for Miller's emergence as a Test cricketer of the highest class.

#ashes#1946#brisbane

⭐Serious

Barnes 234, Bradman 234 — The Identical-Score 405 at Sydney, December 1946

Australia v England

1946-12-17

On 17 December 1946 at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Sid Barnes and Don Bradman put together 405 for the fifth wicket against England — and were both out for exactly 234, an identical-score coincidence Barnes later admitted was deliberate. The stand remains the world Test record for the fifth wicket, was at the time the highest partnership for any wicket in Ashes cricket, and helped Australia to an innings win that effectively decided the post-war series.

#sid-barnes#bradman#scg

⭐Moderate

Ray Lindwall's Test Debut — Wellington, March 1946

Australia v New Zealand

1946-03-29

Ray Lindwall — recently demobilised from the Australian Army's New Guinea campaign — took the new ball in his Test debut at the Basin Reserve, Wellington, on 29 March 1946. He took 1/13 and 1/16 in a match completed in two days as New Zealand were dismissed for 42 and 54. Decades later the ICC retrospectively granted the fixture full Test status (March 1948 ratification), confirming Lindwall's first cap in the same match in which Bill O'Reilly bowled the last over of his Test career.

#lindwall#test-debut#australia

⭐Serious

Keith Miller's 185 for the Dominions at Lord's — August 1945

Dominions XI v England XI

1945-08-27

Three months after VE Day, Keith Miller hit 185 for a Dominions XI against England at Lord's, the highest score of an unforgettable post-war summer. He went from 61 not out overnight to 185 in 99 minutes on the third morning, striking seven sixes — including one over the press box that landed in the upper tier and another that cleared 170 metres into Block Q. Wisden called the match 'one of the finest ever seen' at headquarters; Miller's innings, more than any other in 1945, told English audiences that pre-war balance of power had been broken.

#keith-miller#dominions#lords

⭐Serious

The Victory Tests — England v Australian Services, May-Aug 1945

England v Australian Services XI

1945-05-19

Less than two weeks after VE Day, England and an Australian Services XI began a five-match Victory Test series at Lord's that ended 2-2 with one drawn after a final-day finish at Old Trafford on 22 August 1945. Played as celebration cricket and watched by 367,000 people across three grounds, the series re-introduced first-class cricket to a war-weary Britain, launched Keith Miller and confirmed Lindsay Hassett's quality as a captain. Although first-class only — neither board would grant Test status to Services teams — the series functioned as a public reopening of cricket and is the foundation of the modern English summer calendar.

#victory-tests#1945#wwii

⭐Moderate

Lindsay Hassett — Services Captain in the Victory Tests, 1945

Australian Services XI v England

1945-05-19

Lindsay Hassett, the only experienced Test cricketer in the Australian Services side, captained the team that brought first-class cricket back to England in the summer of 1945. With Stan Sismey, Cec Pepper, Keith Miller, Graham Williams and Lindsay Hassett himself doing most of the cricketing work, the Services drew the five-Test 'Victory' series 2-2 against an England side led by Walter Hammond. Hassett, who had refused an officer's commission and toured on warrant officer's pay of 12 shillings a day, was praised in Wisden as 'a cricketer-captain in the Bradman mould but with rather more humour'.

#lindsay-hassett#victory-tests#1945

⭐Serious

The Doodlebug at Lord's — RAF v Army, 29 July 1944

Army XI v Royal Air Force XI

1944-07-29

On 29 July 1944, before more than 3,000 spectators at Lord's, an Army XI played the Royal Air Force in a wartime charity match featuring Wally Hammond. About an hour into play, a German V-1 'doodlebug' flying bomb cut its motor directly overhead. Players and crowd flattened themselves on the turf; the bomb dived to earth roughly 200 yards short of the ground. Bob Wyatt picked himself up, completed his interrupted run-up, and Jack Robertson lofted the very next ball into the Grand Stand for six. Plum Warner later said the moment summarised what cricket meant to wartime London.

#lords#wwii#doodlebug

⭐Explosive

Maurice Turnbull Killed by Sniper at Montchamp — August 1944

Glamorgan / England (cricket); 1st Battalion Welsh Guards (military)

1944-08-05

Major Maurice Turnbull of the Welsh Guards, the Glamorgan and England all-round sportsman who had played nine Tests, captained Glamorgan for ten years and represented Wales at rugby and squash, was shot through the head by a sniper near the Normandy village of Montchamp on 5 August 1944. He was 38. His was the second Test cricketer death of the Normandy campaign and ended the most polished all-round sporting career produced by inter-war Welsh cricket.

#maurice-turnbull#wwii#glamorgan

😂Moderate

Father Time Falls — A Barrage-Balloon Cable at Lord's, 1944

n/a (ground incident)

1944-09-01

Late in the 1944 wartime season at Lord's, a steel cable from a barrage balloon moored on the Nursery Ground broke loose in a wind and snagged the iconic Father Time weather-vane on top of the Grand Stand. The cable wrapped around the figure, brought it down and deposited Father Time among the front-row seats below. The most high-profile damage to Lord's during the Second World War, MCC's curators noted, came not from the Luftwaffe but from one of London's own air-defence balloons.

#lords#father-time#wwii

⭐Explosive

Hedley Verity Dies of Wounds at Caserta — July 1943

Yorkshire / England (cricket); 1st Battalion Green Howards (military)

1943-07-31

Hedley Verity, the Yorkshire and England slow left-arm bowler whose 144 Test wickets at 24.37 included a record 15 wickets in a single Lord's Test, died on 31 July 1943 in a German-controlled hospital at Caserta after being severely wounded leading his platoon during the Allied invasion of Sicily. He was 38, and had not played first-class cricket since taking 7/9 against Sussex on the day Britain declared war. His death — alongside that of fellow Test cricketers Ken Farnes, Ross Gregory and Maurice Turnbull — became the most poignant individual loss cricket suffered in the Second World War.

#hedley-verity#wwii#yorkshire

⭐Explosive

Ross Gregory Killed in RAF Wellington Crash — Bengal, June 1942

Victoria / Australia (cricket); RAF 215 Squadron (military)

1942-06-10

Pilot Officer Ross Gregory of the Royal Australian Air Force, attached to RAF 215 Squadron, was killed on 10 June 1942 when the Wellington bomber on which he was the observer exploded in mid-air near Gafargaon in the Mymensingh district of Bengal. Gregory had played two Tests for Australia in 1937 and was widely tipped to be a long-term replacement for Bradman in the middle order. He is the only Test cricketer to die in active service in Asia, and his death — alongside those of Farnes, Verity and Turnbull — became part of the running ledger of cricketers lost to the war.

#ross-gregory#wwii#australia

⭐Explosive

Ken Farnes Killed in RAF Training Crash — Chipping Warden, October 1941

Essex / England (cricket); No.12 OTU, RAF Chipping Warden (military)

1941-10-20

On the night of 20 October 1941, the England Test fast bowler Pilot Officer Ken Farnes was killed when his Vickers Wellington bomber crashed shortly after take-off from RAF Chipping Warden in Oxfordshire on a night-flying training exercise. Farnes was 30, had taken 60 wickets in 15 Tests between 1934 and 1939, and had been one of the few amateurs in the country considered the equal of the leading Australian fast bowlers. His death, just 11 weeks before Hedley Verity was wounded in Sicily, was the first major loss of an active England Test cricketer in the Second World War.

#ken-farnes#wwii#essex

⭐Serious

Bradman Invalided Out — Fibrositis Ends His War, June 1941

Royal Australian Air Force / Australian Imperial Force (Bradman)

1941-06-30

Don Bradman, Australia's captain and the world's most famous cricketer, was invalided out of military service on 30 June 1941 with chronic fibrositis. He had enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in June 1940, transferred to the Army School of Physical Training at Frankston, and within months was so debilitated by muscular pain in his back and right arm that he could not shave himself or comb his hair. The discharge — barely reported at the time under wartime censorship — kept him out of cricket for almost five years and shaped the legend of his post-war return.

#bradman#raaf#aif

⭐Serious

Old Trafford Bombed — Manchester Blitz, December 1940

n/a (ground incident)

1940-12-23

On the nights of 22-23 and 23-24 December 1940 — the Manchester Blitz — Old Trafford cricket ground was hit by Luftwaffe high-explosive bombs aimed at the Trafford Park industrial complex nearby. The members' dining room and the groundsman's quarters were destroyed; most of the pavilion needed rebuilding. The ground had been requisitioned earlier as a Dunkirk transit camp and a supply depot, and Lancashire CCC effectively closed for the war, redirecting members' subscriptions to a war relief fund.

#old-trafford#manchester#wwii