Eddie Gilbert Knocks the Bat from Bradman's Hand at the Gabba, 1931

Eddie Gilbert had played his first Sheffield Shield match in 1930-31 and had immediately attracted both wonder and suspicion. He was an Aboriginal man living under the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, which controlled where he could travel, work, and bank his earnings. He was selected for Queensland on raw pace; the Gabba had only opened to first-class cricket the previous summer.

Queensland captain Frank Gough chose to bowl first on a hard, fast Brisbane pitch in early-summer humidity. Gilbert opened with the breeze. His first over removed Bill caught at slip. Bradman, the world's most famous batsman, walked out at 1 for 1 to a quiet, expectant crowd of about 4,000.

New South Wales batted first against Queensland at the Brisbane Cricket Ground on a fast pitch. Wendell Bill was caught at slip in Gilbert's first over without scoring. Bradman walked to the middle at 1 for 1. What happened next was reconstructed by witnesses, by the players themselves, and by Bradman in print years afterwards.

The first ball lifted; Bradman played and missed. The second was a short, climbing delivery that grazed the peak of his cap as he rocked backwards and lost his footing — at one point he was sitting on the pitch. The third flew over Bradman's head to wicketkeeper Len Waterman. The fourth knocked the bat out of Bradman's hands as he attempted to fend or hook. The fifth Bradman tried to hook again. The sixth he edged behind to Waterman. He had faced 19 balls in total across two Gilbert overs and a Thurlow over, and was out for 0.

Gilbert finished with figures that read like folklore: NSW were rolled for 109 and Bradman, the man who would average 99.94, was beaten by sheer pace. Bradman wrote later that Gilbert's spell that morning was 'faster than anything seen from Larwood or anyone else.' Some witnesses thought Gilbert's deliveries that morning topped 95 mph; the Queensland team mate Hugh Thurlow believed they touched 100.

Gilbert, born on the Barambah (later Cherbourg) Aboriginal Settlement in 1908, bowled with a short run-up — about four metres — and a wristy, whippy action that observers described as half pace bowler, half stockwhip. Umpires repeatedly no-balled him for throwing across his career. He bowled with a permit issued by the Queensland Aboriginal Protector. He could not stay in the same hotels as his white team-mates and could not draw his own pay without official sign-off. The morning of 6 November 1931 was the high point of a career that the rules of the day, and the racism of the day, would slowly grind down.

“Faster than anything seen from Larwood or anyone else.”

“His pace was inhuman, frightening.”

Gilbert was selected for the Australian XI trial in 1931-32 but was not picked for the Test side. From 1932 onwards he was repeatedly no-balled for throwing — by umpires Andy Barlow and others — and the matter became a public debate. Modern biomechanical analysis of the only surviving newsreel film of his action suggests his elbow flexion may indeed have been outside the range tolerated today, but the methodology of 1930s no-balling was based on the naked eye.

He last played Sheffield Shield in 1936, by which time the Queensland Cricket Association had quietly stopped picking him. He returned to Cherbourg, was committed in 1949 to Goodna Mental Hospital, and spent the rest of his life in institutional care; he died in 1978. Bradman, when asked late in life, never retreated from his judgement that Gilbert's spell that day was as fast as any he had faced.