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.
Tallon had set a Sheffield Shield record of 12 dismissals in a match for Queensland v New South Wales in 1939, including 7 catches in an innings. He kept his counsel almost entirely; team-mates rarely heard him speak.
Through the 1948 tour Tallon's keeping kept the Australian attack tight; on bouncy English wickets Lindwall in particular needed an athletic gloveman to take the ball down the leg side.
Tallon, born 1916 in Bundaberg, Queensland, had waited a decade for his Test cap. War service and the strength of pre-war keepers (Oldfield, Barnett) kept him out until 1946. By 1948 he was 32 and at his peak.
Keeping to Lindwall and Miller's pace and to the assorted spin of Ian Johnson, Colin McCool and Doug Ring, Tallon stood up or back as the bowler required. His footwork was so quiet that Wisden remarked it was 'as if he keeps without effort'. In the five Tests of 1948 he made 12 catches and 1 stumping; on the tour as a whole 43 catches and 18 stumpings.
The Oval catch on 18 August 1948 came in England's first innings. Hutton, batting at one end while wickets fell at the other, glanced Lindwall fine; Tallon flung himself left and held the ball one-handed at full stretch. Hutton was out for 30, England 52 all out, and the foundation laid for Australia's innings victory.
1946 — Test debut v New Zealand at Wellington
1948 tour — 43 catches, 18 stumpings in first-class matches
18 Aug 1948 — leg-side catch dismisses Hutton for 30, Oval Test
1949 — named Wisden Cricketer of the Year
1916
Born, Bundaberg, Queensland
1939
12-dismissal Shield record v NSW
1946
Test debut
1948
Invincibles tour; Wisden CYC 1949
1953
Retires from Tests
“The finest wicketkeeper I have seen.”
Tallon kept wicket in two further series — South Africa 1949-50 and the 1953 Ashes — before retiring in 1953 with 21 Tests, 50 catches and 8 stumpings. He coached briefly in Queensland and died in 1984.
Bradman's repeated public assessment that Tallon was 'the best wicketkeeper I have seen' has stuck for three-quarters of a century. The Oval catch is the freeze-frame around which his reputation rests.
Bradman ranked Tallon and Bert Oldfield as Australia's two greatest keepers and consistently put Tallon first. Lindwall and Miller, the bowlers who stood to gain most from the assessment, both endorsed it. Tallon's leg-side Oval dive remains one of the iconic black-and-white photographs of the Invincibles series.
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.