Tour of England 1938              Captain : Don Bradman

19th Australian Test tour

18th Test-playing tour of England by Australia

(March -

     September 1938)

While the touring party’s batsmen had an outstanding season, with Bradman scoring nearly 2500 runs and Brown, Hassett and Badcock also being prolific scorers, their bowling seemed much more ordinary. Nevertheless the Australians retained the Ashes because they bowled better on the one helpful pitch of the series at Headingley, where O’Reilly scythed through the English batting with ten wickets and Fleetwood-Smith seven. In the final Test at The Oval England took revenge and racked up the record total (903 - 7) in first-class cricket in England.

O'Reilly shouldered most of the the load all summer and it was a mistake that Grimmett was left behind in Australia. McCormick, built up as a great fast bowler, took only 34 wickets on the tour. In his opening spell of the tour at Worcester McCormick bowled eight no-balls in his first over and nine in his second and never really recovered his confidence. Only at Lord’s was he menacing.

The tourists lost a Scarborough Festival match, which was the first defeat outside Tests since 1921.

As in 1890, the Test match at Manchester was abandoned without a ball being bowled because of persistent rain, so it was in effect a four-Test series.

The manager Bill Jeanes, a long-serving administrator who also acted as treasurer, was awarded the OBE in the June honours list.  Most of his requests to the Australian Board of Control were flatly refused but at least he gained permission that the players' wives could meet them at the end of the tour. Earlier the Board had refused Mrs Bradman permission to join her husband in England after the fifth Test.  Jeanes also gratified  the tired players by persuading the Board to decline an invitation to play four matches in Jamaica on the way home.

Other Australian Tours

Previous tour

South Africa 1935-36

Next tour

New Zealand 1945-46

Next tour of England

1948

Members of the Test tour party (16)

Opening batsmen:  Jack Fingleton, Jack Badcock, Bill Brown.

Middle-order batsmen  Donald Bradman, Sidney Barnes, Arthur Chipperfield, Lindsay Hassett, Stan McCabe.

Wicket-keepers    Ben  Barnett, Charlie Walker

Slow bowlers  ‘Chuck’ Fleetwood-Smith, Bill O’Reilly, Frank Ward, Ted White.

Fast bowlers   Ernie McCormick, Mervyn Waite.

Comments from Barry Valentine’s “Cricket’s Dawn That Died”  1991 pages 236-7.

State representation

  Sheffield Shield teams

N   - New South Wales (6)

Q  -  Queensland (1)

S - South Australia (5)

V  - Victoria  (4)

Average age of  team at time of first Test match

 (10 June 1938) : 

      28 yrs  3 months

Test Appearances made before the tour

McCabe 35,  Bradman 33,  O'Reilly 22,  Fingleton 14,  Chipperfield 13,  Brown 12,  McCormick 9,  Fleetwood-Smith 6,  Badcock 3,  Ward 3,  Barnes 0,  Barnett 0,  Hassett 0,  White 0,  Waite 0,  Walker 0.

Tour Officials

W H Jeanes, secretary of the Australian Cricket Board of Control, was appointed manager on 22 September 1937. Dr Roly Pope again accompanied the touring side as a general assistant, the last of his tours to England. The Board appointed Dr Isaac Jones of London as medical advisor who could arrange hospital treatment for injured players.

Selectors

 Don Bradman (South Australia),  E A ‘Chappie’ Dwyer (New South Wales),  W J Johnston (Victoria).

Selection

Not available:  None known.

Tour Party Announced :  27 January 1938.

Not selected : Don Tallon.  His non-selection for the touring party surprised commentators. He was Bradman's preference but the other two selectors considered that previous experience in English conditions was important and out-voted Bradman. All three agreed that Oldfield was past his best.

Tallon's omission was overshadowed by the row over Clarrie Grimmett, who had a superb record in South Africa in 1935-36 and had topped the 1938-39 Sheffield Shield averages, showing he had lost none of his skills.  But Bradman lobbied for Frank Ward, partly because Grimmett was a liability in the field.  Another not picked was batsman Ross Gregory, though there is a question over whether he was available.

Jack Badcock's place was in doubt and he needed a medical confirmation in February, otherwise Keith Rigg of Victoria would have toured.

Time between selection and departure from Australia    

  53 days

(27 January - 21 March)

Travel

Fremantle  T  Southampton

                ‘Orontes’

On 25 February 1938 the team went from Melbourne to Tasmania. After two matches in Tasmania and one in Western Australia the team sailed from Fremantle on 21 March on the 'Orontes' via Colombo (30 March), Aden (5 April) and Suez (9 April). The Australians would not play at the Gezira Club, Cairo. 

Sailing on via Naples, Villefranche and Gibraltar, the ship berthed at Southampton at 1 pm on 20 April. The team then went by train to Waterloo Station.

Next day there was a practice session at Lord's Ground and a presentation at Australia House but the first match did not take place for another ten days. The team’s headquarters were the Victoria Hotel, near Trafalgar Square.

Time spent in England

   156 days

(20  April  - 24 September)

On-tour selection panel

Don Bradman (captain),  Stan McCabe (vice-captain),  Ben Barnett.

Reinforcements

Sidney Barnes fractured his wrist as he fell when exercising on the sea voyage; he kept his injury secret until the tourists had passed Gibraltar, for fear of being sent home. He was unable to play until the end of June, after the second Test.  On 23 April manager Jeanes asked the Australian Board for an additional batsman as replacement for Barnes (which would have been Gregory, Rigg or Lee). This was refused because Barnes was not regarded as a key member of the Test side. (Bill O’Reilly wrote the opposite in the Sydney Morning Herald 5 February 1948, that the Board wanted to replace Barnes with another player but the ‘executive’ of Bradman, McCabe and Jeanes stuck with Barnes).

Barnes was saved from being sent home by a clause the Australian Board had inserted that under no circumstances could air transport be used.  He subsequently played from mid-tour and scored 1000 runs.

The deputy 'keeper Charlie Walker broke a finger and was out for six weeks. Barnes deputised for Ben Barnett in two county matches.

Arthur Chipperfield entered a Dundee nursing home to recover from appendicitis and did not play again on the tour.  Don Bradman fractured his ankle in the Oval Test and saw out the rest of the tour recuperating at the home of Walter Robins.

Fixtures/Results

Mr Harry Mallett, Australia’s representative at the ICC in England, prepared the draft programme for the tour

† not first-class

Time spent in England before First Test: 

  50 days

(20 April - 10 June)

* In the Lord’s Test, cameras broadcast a Test match for the first time.

Test appearances on tour

4  -  Badcock, Barnett, Bradman, Brown, Fingleton, Fleetwood-Smith, Hassett, McCabe, O'Reilly

3  -  McCormick

2  -  Waite

1  -  Barnes, Chipperfield, Ward.

0  -  Walker, White.

Highlights

•   Bradman said of Stan McCabe's innings at Trent Bridge (232) ‘You will never see the like again.’

•   Following-on, Brown (133) and Bradman (144*) stopped England in their tracks and made the Trent Bridge game safe.

•   Bill Brown bettered this innings with 204 not out at Lord’s, becoming the fourth Australian to carry his bat through an innings in England.

•   On a wearing pitch at Headingley Bill O’Reilly had figures of 5-66 and 5-56, while Fleetwood-Smith had 3-73 and 4-34.

Tour Summary

Return to Australia

Tilbury     T     Adelaide

              ‘Orontes’

Nine players (O'Reilly, Fleetwood-Smith, Chipperfield, Fingleton, Walker, Ward, Hassett, Barnett, Waite) left on Saturday 24 September. They sailed out of Tilbury on the 'Orontes'

On the following Tuesday 27 September, manager Bill Jeanes and vice-captain McCabe and their wives left Victoria Station, London, on the boat train to catch the 'Orontes' at Naples.  On the Thursday Bradman and his wife left Victoria for Toulon where they would catch the ship.

The team arrived back in Fremantle on 25 October, and Adelaide on 31 October.

Time away from Australia

  218 days  

(21 March to 25 October)

Finances

The Australian Board of Control received £36 000 as their share of the tour profits

Written accounts of the tour

“Test Cricket Souvenir 1938”   (1938)  from The Age and The Leader (David Syme & Co)

“Australian Cricket Tour 1938 – 19th Visit to England” (1938)   edited by  A.W. Simpson

“Cricket’s Dawn that Died”  (1991)  by Barry Valentine (Breedon Books, Derby)

Valentine’s is the only full tour book.  He explains that other sources included Neville Cardus’s daily press reports, which were included in “The Essential Neville Cardus”, and Jack Fingleton’s “Cricket Crisis”

Postscript

It was the last exchange between Australia and England made before the Second World War because the proposed MCC visit in 1940-41 could not take place. The Australian Cricket Board of Control also abandoned their plans to tour New Zealand towards the end of the 1939-40 season.

Valentine’s judgement on 1938 was “The fact that a side with so little display of individual brilliance could retain the Ashes against a rising England side … was a tribute to Bradman’s inspiring and disciplined leadership” (Cricket’s Dawn That Died, 1991)