Through the summer of 1921 Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald operated as the most feared new-ball pair the world had yet seen. Together they took 46 wickets in the five Tests as Warwick Armstrong's Australians won the series 3-0, and inspired a decade of English broadcasting and journalism that would obsess about pace until Larwood's Bodyline answer arrived ten years later.
Australia had no reliable spin bowler in 1921. Armstrong's solution was to lean entirely on the two pacemen, with himself bowling some leg-spin in support and Macartney providing flat left-arm orthodox. The new-ball pair was uniquely productive because Armstrong used them in the same spells, often three, four or even five overs each before a change.
Gregory was a 6 ft 4 in giant who took a 13-pace approach and bowled with a leaping delivery so violent that mid-off and gully would step back when he ran in. McDonald, by contrast, glided to the crease with what Neville Cardus called 'an air of beautiful malice'. The two had bowled together at Sydney during the 1920-21 series, but the English summer of 1921 was their joint masterpiece.
At Trent Bridge in May, Australia won by 10 wickets in two days; Gregory took 6 for 58. At Lord's in June, McDonald took 8 wickets and Gregory 4 as Australia won by eight wickets. Headingley belonged to both — Gregory 7 wickets in the match, McDonald 5 — and the Old Trafford and Oval Tests were drawn only because of weather and the resilience of Hobbs and Woolley. The aggregate of 46 Test wickets at sub-25 averages had been seen before only from the great Sydney Barnes, but never from a pair operating in tandem at that pace.
The psychological effect was as great as the statistical one. England batsmen openly described being intimidated; Hampshire's Phil Mead said McDonald's away-swinger was 'a thing you could not see properly until it was past you'. The Marylebone Cricket Club was so shaken by the experience that the search for an English answer began that winter — and ended a decade later with Harold Larwood's leg-theory.
Trent Bridge, May 1921: Gregory 6/58, Australia win by 10 wickets in two days
Lord's, June 1921: Combined 12 wickets; Australia win by 8 wickets
Headingley, July 1921: Joint match figures of 12; Australia win by 219 runs
Old Trafford, July 1921: Drawn after rain disruption
Oval, August 1921: Drawn; series ends 3-0 to Australia, Gregory and McDonald with 46 Test wickets between them
May 1921
Trent Bridge: Gregory destroys England in two days
Jun 1921
Lord's: McDonald takes 8, Gregory 4
Jul 1921
Headingley: pair share 12 wickets
Aug 1921
Series ends 3-0 with 46 Test wickets between them
“We faced something we had never seen before — two of them, both fast, both hostile, both at the same time.”
McDonald soon afterwards signed for Lancashire as a professional, becoming one of the most feared county bowlers of the 1920s. Gregory's Test career continued until injury cut it short in 1928. Their 1921 partnership remained the gold standard for opening pace until Lindwall and Miller in the late 1940s.
Gregory and McDonald were the first true new-ball pair in international cricket and their 1921 partnership reset what English batting was prepared to face — a memory that, more than any single tactical decision, drove the Bodyline plans of 1932-33.
Cricket historians treat 1921 as the moment when 'the new-ball pair' became a strategic concept rather than a happy accident. Every later great pairing — Lindwall and Miller, Hall and Griffith, Lillee and Thomson, Marshall and Garner, Wasim and Waqar, McGrath and Lee, Steyn and Philander — owes something to the precedent.
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.