The Bradman surge of 1936/37: The story of the only Test comeback from 0-2 down

Bill Woodfull had an eventful career as Australian captain. On either side of conceding the Ashes after the Bodyline series, he celebrated his birthday by regaining the urn in England, in 1930 and 1934.

When he retired after the second series, Don Bradman – vice-captain on that tour – was the obvious successor but he had limited captaincy experience, having never led a side at state level. On cue, the South Australia selectors replaced Vic Richardson with him as captain.

Bradman stayed back in Australia in the summer of 1935/36 as Richardson led the national side on a tour of South Africa. There, Clarrie Grimmett claimed 44 wickets and Bill O’Reilly 27 as Australia easily won 4-0.

Yet, when England came over in 1936/37, Bradman left Grimmett out of the team and picked Frank Ward. In the MCC’s tour match against South Australia, Ward had been the better leg-spinner, claiming 10-177 to Grimmett’s 2-88.

A day before this match began, Bradman had lost his one-day-old son – his first child. He missed the match, but was present at the Adelaide Oval, to watch the second day’s play.

Perhaps this performance had tilted the balance in Ward’s favour. Or perhaps the fact that Grimmett was 14 years older to him. Whatever it was, the leading wicket-taker in Test cricket at that point never played another Test match, despite the English side’s visible struggle against the leg-spinners in the side matches on the tour. Perhaps three of a kind – O’Reilly was an automatic choice – would have been overkill.

Bradman, already not a popular man, had his differences with – among others – not only Grimmett, but also Richardson and O’Reilly, both of whom rated Grimmett highly. The decision certainly did not help.

Brisbane: England won by 322 runs

Jack Hobbs had retired some time ago, but now Herbert Sutcliffe was gone as well, as were Andy Sandham, Hobbs’ opening partner at Surrey, and Percy Holmes, Sutcliffe’s at Yorkshire. With Len Hutton still to arrive, England were going through a phase of transition at the top.

Harold Larwood, hero of England’s last Ashes tour, was not there either, but there was Bill Voce, Hedley Verity, and captain Gubby Allen.

The amateur Allen’s choice over the professional Wally Hammond as captain had to more to do with the times than anything else. In 1937, Hammond would take up a job at Marsham Tyres and switch to amateur status, and would immediately be appointed captain – but that is another story.

As talismanic batter, seam bowler, and outstanding slip fielder, Hammond was England’s outstanding cricketer of the tour. But here, he fell first ball, one of Ernie McCormick’s three early wickets on a lively pitch, and England were soon 20-3.

A stroke of luck then went England’s way as McCormick walked off after eight overs with an attack of lumbago. Not for the first time did Maurice Leyland – he averaged 56.83 in the Ashes – bail out England, with 126, as they reached 358.

Australia made 234, largely due to Jack Fingleton’s 100 at the top – a record fourth Test hundred in four innings. Voce (6-41) got the big wicket, of Bradman, caught at gully for 38.

England made 256. Australia needed 381. They lost Fingleton first ball, but went to stumps on fourth day one wicket down. There was little to worry about, yet… but then it rained all night, and the familiar Brisbane sticky collapse followed: despite the shuffling in the batting order, Australia were bowled out for 58, their second-lowest score on home soil.

Bradman walked out at 7-3. The first ball shot to his chest, but he survived that. He edged the next ball to third slip.

Irving Rosenwater quoted Allen in his seminal biography of Bradman: “Don Bradman seems very jumpy, and, I should say, was not at all well, and, if we can keep him in that frame of mind, we ought to win the rubber.”

The Australian media tore into Bradman. Over a decade later, he would write in Farewell to Cricket: “My own captaincy came in for a good deal of criticism. There was certainly a section of the public who thought the cares of captaincy were undermining my efficiency.”

A great personal tragedy. Two batting failures. A defeat in his first Test match as captain. The ruthless Australian press. And things would get further downhill.

Sydney: England won by an innings and 22 runs

Had his career not overlapped almost entirely with Bradman’s, Hammond would almost certainly have been hailed as the greatest batter of the era. However, he did win a battle against Bradman from time to time. The Sydney Test, albeit decided almost entirely by the toss, was one of them.

“Owing to the long drought, the groundman feared the wicket would not last as well as is usual in Test matches at Sydney,” reported the Wisden Almanack. Allen won the all-important toss, and England amassed 426-6 after two days of cricket. Hammond was 231 not out, and in ominous form.

A rest day followed, and then… it rained all night on the underprepared pitch, and Allen declared on the overnight score.

He greeted Bradman with an arc of slips, which perhaps made Bradman shuffle across and try to turn the first ball he faced, from Voce. The edge flew to Allen at gully.

Bradman had now been dismissed thrice in four balls in Test cricket.

Australia folded for 80, though Richardson commented that “most of the batsmen got themselves out during the storm in the night.” He was validated by Australia’s second-innings show, as Fingleton (73), Bradman (82), and Stan McCabe (91) all got runs.

At 318-5, they seemed set to make England bat again. But they could make only six more runs, and that was that. It did not help that the ill Jack Badcock could not bat in the first innings and stepped out of sick bed in the second.

Despite the runs, Bradman was criticised for his dismissal – he missed a long hop and was bowled: “The greatest run-getter in the history of cricket has made the worst stroke in the history of cricket,” wrote CB Fry.

Note: During this innings, Walter Robins famously dropped Bradman off Voce, and Allen responded with the famous “it has probably cost us the rubber, but don’t give it a thought.” The myth of the incident taking place during Bradman’s 270 in the third Test match was debunked by Brian Rendell in Gubby Under Pressure: Letters from Australia, New Zealand and Hollywood, a volume of Allen’s letters.

The knives were out for him, sharper than they were after the Brisbane defeat. Amidst the many calls for his resignation, Bradman’s stance was clear: “It would be sheer cowardice to abandon what appeared to be a sinking ship.”

Surely England could not lose from there?

Melbourne: Australia won by 365 runs

The day after the second Test match, an explosive report appeared in the Sydney Daily Telegraph: “Selectors and the Board of Control are disturbed at the suggestion that the Test teams are not pulling together, and that Bradman has not had the support generally given to an Australian captain.”

The board questioned O’Reilly, McCabe, Chuck Fleetwood-Smith, and Leo O’Brien. They found nothing, but that did not prevent the rumour that the entire thing had been planned by Bradman, something he always denied. Yet again, it did little to improve his reputation among colleagues.

Nevertheless, he won his first toss as Test captain on New Year’s Day and opted to bat. Australia went in with four changes in front of a crowd that broke “all records for attendances and receipts in a cricket match”. A staggering 87,798 would come to watch the third day’s cricket.

On a “lifeless” wicket, England reduced Australia to 130-6 before it rained. The wicket did not deteriorate, but the bowlers found it difficult to grip the ball, and Australia reached 182-6 by stumps.

But it rained again, until lunch on the next day. When play resumed this time, the vagaries of the pitch became apparent. Bradman declared on 200-9, and it soon became evident that England would fare little better. “You didn’t want cricketers on that pitch,” wrote William Pollock in The Daily Express. “You wanted the Crazy Gang, Mickey Mouse, Einstein, and Euclid.”

As England lost wickets, Bradman insisted his bowlers switched to defensive lines to delay Australia’s innings as much as possible. Desperate to get Australia in, Allen, one of the unbeaten batters, then walked off, Voce in tow. England were 76-9: it was the first instance of both captains declaring the first innings in the same Test match.

Instead of walk off, Bradman now he approached the umpires, John Scott and George Borwick: since Allen had not informed Bradman and had just walked off, had he really declared?

The umpires had little option but to go to the English dressing-room to verify. Allen knew immediately: “That little blighter! Of course I have declared.” The entire charade helped Bradman kill five minutes of batting time on a wet wicket.

Having done that, he flipped the batting order, sending his tail-enders O’Reilly and Fleetwood-Smith to open (“you can’t hit the ball on a good wicket, so you won’t be able to edge it on this,” he famously told Fleetwood-Smith).

When O’Reilly fell first ball, he promoted Ward. Australia finished the day on 3-1 in a day when 13 wickets fell in three hours. Fleetwood-Smith returned to the pavilion unbeaten, without having made a single contact with the bat.

Australia were 97-5 when an ill-looking Bradman joined Fingleton on the third day. He eliminated the off-drive and, generally, most off-side strokes in the first part of the innings. “Not until the evening was it revealed that Bradman was suffering from a severe chill. That explained his sedateness,” explained the Wisden Almanack.

Throughout their lives, Bradman and Fingleton were seldom on great terms – and that is putting it too simply. But now they came together to put on 346 – a world record for the sixth wicket as well as for any wicket on Australian soil. Fingleton left for 136, but Bradman continued until the fifth morning before he fell for 270.

In 2002, Wisden announced their list of top 100 innings in Test cricket. Bradman’s chanceless seven-hour-thirty-eight-minute marathon – the longest innings of his Test career – would top the list.

England made 323 against the unrealistic target of 689. The Ashes were alive.

Adelaide: Australia won by 148 runs

England were still in the lead, but they had problems of their own. Struggling to find Sutcliffe’s successor at the top, England had mustered 0, 17, 27, 0, and 29 in their five opening stands. And their nemesis had not just found runs but also won the toss on his home ground and opted to bat.

Yet, England did well to bowl out Australia for 288. An “unusually restrained” Bradman made 26 in 68 minutes before trying to hook Allen, missing the line, and losing his wicket.

Desperate to find an opening pair, Allen sent tail-ender Verity to open with Charlie Barnett. It worked (they added 53 and 45 in the Test), but it was hardly a long-term solution. For now, Barnett made 129 to push England to 330, though they should have scored more after being 299-5.

Bradman emerged on the third day of this timeless Test match. He fell on the fifth, playing “not one of his most brilliant efforts but he has never looked more sure of himself.” His 212 – made in seven hours seventeen minutes – turned the Test match on its head.

Chasing 392, England were in it at 190-4, but they collapsed to 243 against the left-arm wrist spin of Fleetwood-Smith (6-110), who “was in an inspired mood and utilised the pitch to his needs as no bowler on the English side could have done.”

Melbourne: Australia won by 200 runs

Unlike the previous two Test matches, England went down with a whimper in the decider. Bradman won his third consecutive toss, and Australia batted into the third day to amass 604.

After two dour efforts by his standards, Bradman finally came to his elements on a flat wicket under glorious sunshine. He “did not once put the ball in the air”, but still managed to score at rapid pace as he put Australia on top with a 191-ball 169.

There were others too. After Braman and McCabe (112 in 155) added 249 for the third wicket, Badcock (118) and Ross Gregory (80) piled on more runs as England dropped four “important” catches, all of them at “short leg behind the umpire”.

A poignant moment – though no one would have expected the horrors at that moment – came when Verity had Gregory caught by Ken Farnes. All three would die during the Second World War.

England ended the third day on 184-4. These included the wicket of Hammond, who had done little of note since that double-hundred in Sydney. He struggled against O’Reilly’s leg-theory before – as with Adelaide – perishing while trying to flick against the turn. Yet, things did not look too bad… until the rain came.

On a wet wicket, England collapsed for 239 and 165. O’Reilly got Hammond again to finish with a match haul of 8-109.