The First Tied Test — Brisbane, December 1960

By 1960 the long-form game was in trouble. Crowds were dwindling on both sides of the equator; the 1958-59 Ashes had been described as one of the most boring series in memory. The West Indies were arriving in Australia under their first regular Black captain, Frank Worrell, with C.L.R. James's Trinidad-based campaign having finally forced the West Indies Cricket Board's hand earlier in 1960.

Worrell and the Australian board's chairman Sir Donald Bradman had agreed before the series began that they wanted attacking cricket. Bradman addressed the Australian players in the dressing room before the first Test and reminded them that selection would reward intent, not survival. Both captains kept their word.

Australia chose Davidson, Meckiff, Benaud and the spinners Lindsay Kline and Ken Mackay; West Indies fielded Hall, Sobers, Lance Gibbs and Valentine. The pitch was flat, the weather warm. Sobers's first-day 132 — reached in 174 minutes after West Indies had slumped to 65 for 3 — set the tempo for everything that followed.

The match itself had been wildly entertaining long before the climax. Garfield Sobers struck a 174-minute 132 in West Indies' first innings of 453, Norm O'Neill replied with a six-and-a-half-hour 181 inside Australia's 505, and Frank Worrell's calm 65 anchored West Indies' second-innings 284. That left Australia 233 to win in 310 minutes on the final afternoon — a target that swung between probable and impossible roughly every twenty minutes.

At 92 for 6, Worrell's tourists looked to have shut the door. Then Alan Davidson, who had already become the first man to score a hundred runs and take ten wickets in the same Test, added 134 with captain Richie Benaud. Australia needed seven from the last over of the match, with three wickets remaining and Benaud on 52, Davidson on 80. Hall, six-foot-two and bowling fast, was handed the ball.

The over played out as one of the longest minutes in cricket: a single off the first ball, Davidson run out by Solomon's throw from square leg attempting a second, Wally Grout pinched a bye off a no-ball, Benaud caught down the leg side hooking, two leg-byes, then Grout caught and Hall fumbled it himself. With one ball left and one run to win, Lindsay Kline pushed Solomon at square leg and ran. Solomon picked up, side-on, and threw down the single stump as Meckiff dived. The umpire's pause felt eternal. Then his finger went up. Tie.

The scoreboard at the Gabba had no setting for a tie; operators left the totals identical and walked away. The crowd, including a young schoolboy named Greg Chappell, sat stunned for several seconds before erupting. Both teams stood on the pavilion steps embracing — an image that would define the series and the era. Don Bradman, who had watched from the stands, called it the greatest game he had ever seen.

“Had Frank failed on that tour it would have set back West Indies cricket, and especially the black cricketer, by twenty years.”

“It was the greatest game I have ever seen.”

The Australian Cricket Board commissioned a perpetual trophy from the former Test bowler and jeweller Ernie McCormick before the series was even over. It was named for Worrell. West Indies lost the series 2-1, but Melbourne's farewell ticker-tape parade for the tourists drew an estimated half-million people — figures usually reserved for visiting royalty.

For years, the official scoreboard at the Gabba carried a small plaque marking the spot from which Solomon had thrown. Bradman, never given to hyperbole, said the Tied Test had "saved Test cricket for a generation". Attendances rose sharply across the next Australian summer.