Tour of England 1953              Captain: Lindsay Hassett

23rd  Australian Test tour

Twentieth Test-playing tour of  England  by Australia

  (March - September 1953) 

The Australian won sixteen of their first-class matches, eleven of them by an innings, and were defeated just once, but in the only match that really mattered: the final Test match at The Oval was the one Test to reach a conclusion in a damp summer. So England regained the Ashes.

It was an intriguing series between two evenly-matched sides. Hassett won the toss in all five matches but Australia’s suspect batting - only the three veterans from the 1948 side, Hassett, Morris and Harvey, averaged more than 30 -  could not take advantage. The batsmen’s fallibility was most obvious against spin and at Old Trafford and The Oval the Australians had far the worst of the match of wet pitches.

Sidney Barnes was not considered for the side but came to England as a reporter. Members of the touring party condemned his published account of the tour with its allegations of “late night junketing” as “a hotch-potch of exaggeration”. In fact the manager reported officially to the Board on the good conduct of every player and recommended that a substantial bonus be awarded.

The 1953 team were asked to play a match in Holland for diplomatic reasons because Canberra and The Hague were at loggerheads over Indonesia.

Other Australian Tours

Previous tour

South Africa 1949-50

Next tour

West Indies 1954-55

Next tour of England

1956  

Members of the Test tour party  (17)

Opening batsmen:  Arthur Morris, Colin McDonald.

Middle-order batsmen: Lindsay Hassett, Ian Craig, Jack de Courcy, Neil Harvey, Graeme Hole

All-rounder:  Keith Miller

Wicket-keeper:  Gil Langley, Don Tallon 

Spin bowlers:  Richie Benaud, Jack Hill, Doug Ring.

Fast bowlers:  Ron Archer, Bill Johnston, Alan Davidson, Ray Lindwall.

Comments from Wisden’s 1954

State representation

   Sheffield Shield teams

N   New South Wales (7)

Q  Queensland (2)

S   South Australia (2)

T   Tasmania (0)

V   Victoria  (6)

W  Western Australia (0)

Average age of  team at time of first Test match

(11 June 1953) :

  28 yrs  6 months

Test Appearances made before the tour

Hassett 38,  Miller 35,  Lindwall 33,  Morris 33,  Johnston 29,  Harvey 24,  Tallon 20,  Ring 12,  Hole 10,  Langley 10,  McDonald 6,  Benaud 5,  Archer 1,  Craig 1,  Davidson 0,  de Courcy 0,  Hill 0.

Tour Officials

G R Davies played for Victoria in 1920-21, was a state selector and vice-president  of the Victorian Cricket Association.  The Board appointed him manager on 9 February over a number of other candidates (W L Rush, A E Liddicut, A J Baker and V Schaeffer (Q). He had previously managed the 1949-50 tour of New Zealand

Selectors

Bill Brown (Queensland),  P L Ridings (South Australia),   J Ryder (Victoria).

It was the first meeting in four years to select a Test touring party; and the only such meeting between 1938 and 1969 not to include Sir Donald Bradman, who stood down because his son John was ill in 1953.

E A Dwyer had been voted off the selection committee by the Australian Board during the 1952-53 season.

Selection

Unavailable: Jack Iverson (for family and business reasons) - he had dropped out of the Victorian state side and was not a serious candidate for the tour; Colin McCool (contract with Lancashire League club East Lancs).

Sidney Barnes made himself unavailable for selection after several controversial incidents (most recently, he came on to the field as twelfth man wearing a suit for some long-winded play-acting as a butler). He said "my card had been marked "; and instead he came to England as a press commentator. Sir Donald Bradman was also in England to report on the tour.

On 18 September the Australian Cricket Board had decided to take only sixteen players but on 9 February agreed to fund one extra place.  The seventeenth place went to Australia’s youngest-ever tourist, Ian Craig

Tour Party Announced :  12 February 1953.

Not selected : Ian Johnson.  He, Tribe, Dooland or McCool could have helped the team's persistent problem of a lack of top-class spin bowling.

Time between selection and departure from Australia 

     39 days

(12 February -  23 March)

Travel

Melbourne     Q     Perth

The team assembled in Melbourne and flew to Cambridge Aerodrome, Hobart, on 6 March.

After two warm-up matches in Tasmania, the team flew from Essendon Airport (Melbourne) in two groups to Perth Airport on 16 March to play a three-day match.  They sailed on the ‘Orcades’, embarking from Fremantle at midnight on 23 March 1953. 

The liner had been delayed from 18 March because of engine trouble and was late arriving at Fremantle The team was now likely to arrive in England nine days late. An offer to be flown from Naples by British European Airways directly to London was declined because the delay would not affect the cricket, only the social programme.

The team stopped for just one day (29 March) to play Ceylon and were at sea again the next day.

They were due to stop at Cairo and practice at the Gezira Sporting Club nets but experienced another delay from a Russian floating dry dock disrupting traffic in the Suez Canal (it was being taken from Odessa to Vladivostock via  Suez and Singapore, and held the ‘Orcades’ up for a further 15 hours). The ship left Port Said 6 April and Gibraltar on the 11th.

The ‘Orcades’ berthed at  Southampton on 13 April.  About 500 people, including four former England captains, were on the platform when their train pulled in to London’s Waterloo Station.

Time spent in England

   166 days

(13 April - 24 September)

On-tour selection

 Lindsay Hassett (captain),  Arthur Morris  (vice-captain),  Keith Miller.

Reinforcements

  None

Fixtures/Results

† not first-class

Time spent in England before First Test: 

  59 days

(13 April - 11 June)

Test appearances on tour

5  -   Davidson,  Harvey,  Hassett,  Hole,  Lindwall,  Miller,  Morris, 

4  -   Langley

3  -   Archer,  Benaud,  Davidson,  Johnston

2  -   Hill

1  -   Ring, Tallon

0  -   Craig,  McDonald.

Highlights

•   Ian Craig was Australia’s youngest-ever tourist

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•   Richie Benuad hit eleven sixes in his innings of 135 in the festival match at Scarborough.

Tour Summary

Return to Australia

Davidson remained in London for his new job at the Commonwealth Bank when the team left England.

Time away from Australia

  211 days  

(23 March to 20 October)

Finances

Profit was £66 000. The manager recommended a bonus for each player of £500.

More money was taken from the second Test at Lord’s than any other previous match, beating the takings from the Melbourne Test in 1946-47.

Written accounts of the tour

“Over to Rex Alston”  (1953)   by Rex Alston  [Fredrick Muller]

"The Ashes Crown the Year”   (1954)   by Jack Fingleton  [Collins]

“Eyes on the Ashes”  (1953)   by Sidney Barnes  [Kimber]

“Behind the Tests”  (1953)  by Norman Cutler  [Putnam]

“Cricket Triumph”  (1953)  by Bruce Harris [Hutchinson]

“The Fight for The Ashes 1953” (1953)  by Peter West [Harrap]

“The Fight for The Ashes 1953” (1953)  by R Lester  [Flagstaff]

“The Book of the Tests” (1953)  by Denzil Bachelor [Hulton Press]

“The England Victory”  (1953)   by Crawford White [News Chronicle]

“The Test Matches of 1953”  by E W Swanton & C B Fry   [Daily Telegraph]

“Thirty Years On”  (1983)   by Gordon Ross [NatWest]

“Gods or Flannelled Fools”  (1954)   by Keith Miller & R S Whitington [Macdonald]

Postscript

Hassett’s strongest cards were his fast bowlers, Lindwall and Miller, but they lacked support from the spin bowlers and from Johnston being injured. Too much of the time the Australians played in wet conditions and only towards the end of the tour did the young batsmen meet the harder wickets they were familiar with. While they gained useful experience, even so they coped poorly with English conditions again in 1956.