Tour of South Africa   1948-49                 Captain : Frank Mann            

  (M. C. C. tour)

©Test Cricket Tours  2015

38th England Test tour.

(October 1948 - March 1949)

Twelfth Test playing tour of South Africa by England

  (previous tour 1938-39)

This was an uplifting tour from England's point of view. The team went undefeated and narrowly won the first and last Test matches of the five-Test series, so recovering from the damage Australia had inflicted in 1948. The first Test at Durban was won on the very last ball of the match when Gladwin ran a leg-bye. In the final Test at Port Elizabeth England again took victory by a whisker after being set 172 runs to win in only an hour and a half, making the runs with a minute to spare. “Dudley Nourse’s captaincy showed definite signs of lacking enterprise, initiative and quick thinking at critical moments” (Green).

Disappointingly, none of the 'finds' of the tour (Mann, Griffith, Jenkins or Watkins) proved to be quite good enough over the next few years to play an important part in England's team.

'Roly' Jenkins replaced Hollies in the tour party on 12 September, when the latter withdrew. Jenkins was unable to overcome his anxiety about flying and travelled by road throughout the tour, accompanying Bill Ferguson with the baggage.

Both Denis Compton and George Mann met their future wives during the tour.

Other England tours

Previous Test tour

West Indies 1947-48

Next Test tour

Australia 1950-51

Next tour of South Africa

1956-57

Members of the Test tour party (16 )

Opening batsmen:  Len Hutton, Cyril Washbrook, Reg Simpson

Middle-order batsmen Jack Crapp, Allan Watkins, Frank Mann, Denis Compton, Charles Palmer

Wicket-keepers: Godfrey Evans, Billy Griffith

Slow bowlers: Doug Wright, Roly Jenkins, Jack Young.

Fast bowlers:  Alec Bedser, Cliff Gladwin, Maurice Tremlett.

County representation:

Dy - Derbyshire (1)

Gm - Glamorgan (1)

Gs - Gloucestershire (1)

Kt - Kent (2)

La - Lancashire (1)

Le - Leicestershire (1)

Mx - Middlesex (3)

Nt - Nottinghamshire (1)

Sm - Somerset (2)

Sy - Surrey (1)

Sx - Sussex (1)

Wo - Worcestershire (1)

Y - Yorkshire (1)

Average age of  team at time of first Test match

(16 December 1948) :

 31 yrs 4 months.

Test Appearances made before the tour

Hutton 32,  Compton 27,  Wright 22,  Evans 20,  Washbrook 19,  Bedser 16,  Young 4,  Crapp 3,  Tremlett 3,  Gladwin 2, Griffith 1,  Watkins 1,  Jenkins 0,  Mann 0,  Palmer 0.  Simpson 0.

Tour Officials

Meintjes was golf club secretary of the Wanderers Club in Johannesburg and had toured England with the South African cricket team in 1935.

Selectors

A J ‘Jack’ Holmes (chairman),  Walter Robins,  John Clay,  Brian Sellers, Pelham Warner.

Selection

M.C.C. announced on 9 August that Frank Mann had accepted as captain, and Mike Green as manager on 12 August.

Unavailable :  Bill Edrich, Wilf Wooller, Norman Yardley and Jack Ikin were unavailable for business reasons. Joe Hardstaff   had a coaching contract in Auckland, New Zealand.  Cambridge University would not release John Dewes. 

Charles Barnett decided to retire, as did Kenneth Cranston; both went to play league cricket.

Tour party announced : 12 August 1948.

Fourteen on the team were named on 12 August.  Tremlett and Hollies took the last two places on 26 August.

Withdrawal : Eric Hollies withdrew unfit, and Roly Jenkins replaced him on 12 September.  Len Hutton was declared fit to tour on 3 September.

Time between selection and departure from England

   56 days

 (12 August  - 7 October)

Travel

Southampton     T    Cape Town

                 ‘Durban Castle’

On 6 October the traditional dinner was held for the departing players at The Tavern at Lord’s, before staying at the Great Western Hotel, Paddington, for the night.

Next morning the team caught a train from Waterloo Station to Southampton where the Union Castle Line gave a farewell luncheon. The team departed from Southampton Docks at 4 pm on the 'Durban Castle', and reached Madeira on 10 October for a two-hour stay.

The ship reached Cape Town at dawn on 22 October, disembarking at 9:15 am. The players drove out to the Balmoral Hotel in Muisenberg, their base for the first ten days of the tour.

Time spent in South Africa

    147 days

(22 October -  18 March)

On-tour selection panel

Frank Mann (captain),  Billy Griffith (vice-captain),  Mike Green (tour manager),  Cyril Washbrook  and Len Hutton (senior professionals)

Reinforcements

None.

Fixtures/Results

† not first-class

Time spent in South Africa before First Test:  

 55 days

(22 October - 16 December)

Test appearances on tour

(v South Africa 1948-49)

5 -   Bedser,  Compton,  Gladwin,  Hutton,  Jenkins,  Mann,  Washbrook,  Watkins.

4 -   Crapp.

3 -   Evans,  Wright.

2 -   Griffith,  Young.

1 -   Simpson.

0 -   Palmer,  Tremlett.

Match appearances

T  Test match

o  one-day international 

x other match 

⊕ T/20 international

∙  played for opposition

W won  L lost  D drawn  

N no result   A abandoned  

u unknown result

Highlights

•  England scored 608 in the first innings of the second Test:

•  Len Hutton (158) and Cyril Washbrook (195) shared an opening partnership of 359

• 

• 

• 

Tour Summary

F  Fixtures   W  Won   L  Lost   D Drawn   T  Tied  Canc  Cancelled  Aban  abandoned

Return to England

Cape Town   T   Southampton

              ‘Stirling Castle’

On 18 March 1949 the team sailed out of Cape Town on the 'Stirling Castle' reaching Las Palmas on 28 March. They disembarked at Southampton on 1 April.

The team was met at Waterloo Station by Lord Gowrie, President of M.C.C., and cricket celebrities.

Time away from England

  177 days  

(7 October -1 April )

Finances

The South African Cricket Association (its Board of Control) paid all expenses and took all the gate money, which made the tour extrememly profitable for them but they tended to economise on accommodation and transport (journeys like 36 hours on the train from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth) until the Board agreed to the manager’s requests for changes: “We flew from Salisbury to Johannesburg which took about three hours instead of three days on the train” (Green).

The professionals complained about what they were paid compared with players visiting England and did not think it fair they were not given more of the profits but their fees had been agreed with M.C.C. before the tour started. Just before the final Test Pienaar of the South African Cricket Association awarded every member of the team a bonus of £75

Accounts of the tour

“Gone with the Cricketers"   by John Arlott   (Longmans, Green & Co,  1950)

Chapters 4 to 9  in  “Sporting Campaigner”  by  Brigadier M A Green (Stanley Paul & Co, 1956)

“The M.C.C. tour of South Africa 1948/49”  video narrated by Charles Palmer (2002).

Postscript

The next planned tour (to India) was cancelled.  The M.C.C. committee felt that, with the effects of National Service and full employment, cricket had not yet recovered from the effects of the Second World War. There was a great strain on the leading players.  M.C.C.'s winter tour for 1949-50 had been cancelled on 13 July 1948. as the start of a planned reduction in tours for the full-strength England team. M.C.C. would now give priority to England's traditional opponents, Australia and South Africa.

As a result of this decision a Commonwealth XI tour party, captained by Jock Livingston, was organised to tour India in 1949-50 instead.

Other Test tours in 1948-49

West Indians in India 1948-49  -  captain John Goddard.

©Test Cricket Tours  2015

Acknowledgements

To general reading of The Times newspaper digital archive (Gale Group);  Jamaica Gleanor archive;  National Library of Australia Trove; Papers Past NZ.

From former British Newspaper Library, Colindale and online:  The Age, Melbourne Argus, Bangladesh Daily Star, Barbados Advocate, Canberra Times, Daily Telegraph, Dawn, Eastern Daily Press, The Hindu, The Independent (Dhaka), Indian Express, The Island (Lanka), Lahore Times, New Nation, New Zealand Auckland Herald, Sri Lanka Daily News, Stabroek News, Straits Times, Sydney Morning Herald, The Telegraph (Calcutta), Times of India , The Tribune Chandigarh, Trinidad Guardian, The West Australian.

cricketweb.net;  ESPN cricinfo;  cricket archive

Magazines/periodicals including Australian Cricket, B & H West Indies Annual, The Cricketer International, Cricketer Quarterly, Indian Cricket, Indian Cricket Field Annual, Playfair Cricket Monthly, Shell Cricket Almanack of New Zealand, Wisden Cricket Monthly, Wisden Book of Test Cricket, Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanack.

Men In White, A History of Australian Cricket (Harte), A History of Indian Cricket (Bose), A History of West Indies Cricket (Manley)

Biography and tour books (own collection and at the M.C.C. Library at Lord’s Ground)                      ALL CONTENTS OF THE TEST-CRICKET-TOURS.CO.UK WEBSITE  ARE COPYRIGHT