On 30 December 1932 at the MCG, Yorkshire's tall fast-medium bowler Bill Bowes, picked for England's Bodyline tour as Larwood's lieutenant, bowled Don Bradman first ball — a long hop that Bradman dragged on attempting to pull. Bowes finished with 1/50 in the innings; the first-ball duck is one of only seven in Bradman's Test career and has been retold in every history of the 1930s ever since.
Bowes had been picked for the 1932-33 tour as a younger backup to Larwood and Voce. He bowled some Bodyline but was used mainly as a fast-medium hit-the-deck option; he was not part of the leg-theory cordon plan.
Bowes, 34, six foot four, bowled fast-medium for Yorkshire and had won his Test cap on the 1932-33 tour after 100 wickets a season for three years. The Melbourne Test on 30 December 1932 was the second of the series; Australia were 0-1 down. Bradman, who had missed the first Test through illness, walked out in the second innings to a packed MCG crowd estimated at 70,000. Cheers ran for nearly half a minute as he made his way to the crease.
Bowes' first ball was a short, ordinary long hop on leg stump; Bradman, eager to start, attempted a hook from inside the line, top-edged into his stumps, and was bowled for 0. The crowd's silence was, by every contemporary account, the most striking sound at a Test match anyone present had heard.
Bowes never had to bowl as well again in his Test career. He took 14 wickets in his 15 Test matches at 22.33; the Bradman dismissal is the one cited. He fought in WW2, was captured at Tobruk and held in Italian and German camps for almost four years; he weighed under nine stone on release in 1945. He returned to county cricket briefly, retired, and became cricket correspondent for the Yorkshire Evening Post until 1985.
Bradman returns from illness; cheers as he walks out.
Bowes' first ball: short long hop on leg.
Bradman attempts hook, top-edges into stumps.
Bowled Bowes 0 first ball.
MCG silent.
Bowes finishes with 1/50; Australia win Test.
Career Test record: 14 wickets at 22.33.
30 Dec 1932
Bradman returns to Test team at MCG.
30 Dec 1932
Bowes bowls Bradman first ball for 0.
Jan 1933
Australia win Test; series 1-1.
1934
Bowes plays five Ashes Tests at home.
1942-45
PoW in Italy and Germany.
1985
Retires from cricket journalism.
“It was a long hop, and a man as great as Bradman should have hit it for four. He didn't.”
“That silence as Bradman walked back is the loudest silence I ever heard.”
Bowes played five Tests in 1934 and a handful in 1938; the Bradman dismissal remained his career high. He was captured at Tobruk in June 1942, held by Italian and German forces for almost four years, and survived the war underweight but in good spirits. He resumed cricket correspondence in 1946.
A Yorkshire fast-medium bowler whose place in cricket history rests on one short ball at Melbourne and one of only seven first-ball ducks in Don Bradman's career.
The first-ball duck is one of those Bradman dismissals — like McCabe's 232 or Larwood's bowling at Adelaide — that lives in every Ashes anthology. Bowes himself wrote about it gently in his autobiography Express Deliveries (1949), refusing to claim it as a deliberate plan: 'It was a long hop, and a man as great as Bradman should have hit it for four. He didn't. That's all there is to say.'
Yorkshire v Essex
1932-06-16
On 15-16 June 1932 Herbert Sutcliffe (313) and Percy Holmes (224*) put on 555 for the first wicket against Essex at Leyton, breaking the world first-class record for any wicket and adding a layer of folklore — including a scoreboard that read 554 for several minutes and a hastily reversed declaration — that has clung to the partnership ever since.
Australia v England
1933-02-14
With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.