Warwick Armstrong's 'Big Ship' Crew — Cricket's First Ashes Whitewash, 1920-21

The Ashes had not been contested since 1912. Both countries had lost a generation of cricketers to the trenches — the wartime deaths of Tibby Cotter, Albert Cotter, Major Booth, Colin Blythe and Kenneth Hutchings cut into the available pools of both sides — but Australia's first-class structure had restarted faster, and several of its core players had served in non-combatant or training roles that left their bodies intact.

MCC's tour party, chosen by an England selection committee still working through the social hierarchies of the amateur game, sailed in the autumn of 1920 with a top-heavy batting order and a thin attack. Wilfred Rhodes, then 43, had agreed to come; Frank Woolley brought all-round craft; but the missing names — Sydney Barnes had refused to tour Australia for a decade; Ted McDonald and Gregory were not available to England — meant the visitors arrived under-equipped from the moment they docked in Fremantle.

The 1920-21 Ashes was the first Test series played anywhere after the four-year gap of the First World War, and the form gap between the two countries was wider than anyone in England had imagined. Australia, captained by the enormous Warwick Armstrong, fielded a settled side built around himself, the opening pair of Herbie Collins and Warren Bardsley, the gifted Charlie Macartney, the ruthless Charles Kelleway and Jack Ryder, and a balanced attack led by Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald. England, under Johnny Douglas, were missing several front-line bowlers either retired or killed in the war, and the touring batting depended too heavily on Jack Hobbs, Frank Woolley and Patsy Hendren.

The series opened in Sydney in December 1920. Australia won by 377 runs, with Collins making 70 and 104 and Armstrong adding a fluent 158. England were never in the second Test at Melbourne either, losing by an innings and 91 as Macartney made 170 and Gregory crashed 100 from number nine. Adelaide produced the closest contest of the series — Australia won by 119 runs after Kelleway's 147 — but at Melbourne again the home side won by eight wickets, and at Sydney in February-March 1921 they completed the whitewash by nine wickets. Armstrong's series tally was 474 runs at an average above 77, with three hundreds, and his captaincy was widely judged the most authoritative seen in Australia since the era of Joe Darling.

No earlier Ashes series had ever ended 5-0. England had been beaten 5-1 in 1897-98 but had at least taken a Test; the very idea that a side could be swept aside in every match across a winter shocked an Edwardian establishment that still saw cricket as a contest of equals between Mother Country and colony. The Big Ship, his bulk wedged behind a long bat, did most of his talking with both bat and team selection — and barely changed his XI at all across the five Tests.

“We were not a team of stars but a team that could play the game; the Englishmen were a team of stars who could not.”

Armstrong took the same group of players, almost unchanged, to England later in 1921 and won the return series 3-0. England did not regain the Ashes until 1926. Armstrong played his final Test in that 1921 series and retired; his record as Australian captain finished 8 wins, 2 draws, 0 defeats.