Heroes of the Hour by Ken Piesse

Author:Ken Piesse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cricket, sport, Melbourne Cricket Ground, MCG, Australia, Adelaide, Adelaide Oval, The Ashes, Ashes, wicket, Chennai, Madras, India, West Indies, Shane Warne, Michael Clarke, Dennis Lillee, Ricky Ponting, Mark Waugh, Ashton Agar
ISBN: 9781760406684
Published: 2017-09-18T20:58:48+00:00

Stan McCabe

SCG, Sydney: 2 & 3 December 1932

Age: 22

Feat: Defies England’s intimidating Bodyliners with the bravest innings of all

Sporting heroes were never more important to the national psyche than in the early 1930s when the crippling effects of the Great Depression saw one in four Australians jobless and millions living on the breadline. Amidst the poverty and heartbreak, the game of Empire was a compelling diversion. Don Bradman’s phenomenal feats during Australia’s triumphant Ashes campaign in the Mother Country in 1930 had provided fresh hope and cheer to a nation on its knees.

The whole of Australia was dotty about the Don. After his string of extraordinary performances home and away, the shy country boy from the Southern Highlands was accorded a rock star’s following unprecedented among Australian sportsmen.

Cricket was never more attractive than when the young Bradman was at the crease. Offices adjacent to Moore Park and the Sydney Cricket Ground emptied when it was known he was soon to bat, traditional lunch hour often extending deep into an afternoon.

Come the lead-in to the first of five Tests in 1932–33, an Ashes season, there’d been smouldering discontent and bewilderment at the young champion’s battle with the Australian Cricket Board of Control over his wish to both play and comment on the upcoming Tests. Cricket back then was purely a leisure. The players had outside jobs. Having just married, Bradman was particularly mindful of the game’s marginal rewards. The authorities, unbending, rigid and dictatorial, told Bradman he was not a full-time journalist and must choose between writing on the series or playing in it.

The issue raged for weeks and remained at an impasse right until the eve of the opening Test for which the Australians had named a 13-man squad, including an extra batsman.

Bradman had looked drawn and run down in the NSW match several weeks earlier. Come Test week, he was still ill and reluctantly withdrew.

It was a national calamity. At 25, Bradman was the game’s acclaimed Colossus, the darling of all-Australia. ‘It might have been the fall of an Empire,’ wrote one cable reporter. ‘Bulletins were posted in shop windows and no one could talk, think or speak of anything else.’ 1

The lead-in games to the Test had been shrouded by controversy with the MCC’s captain Douglas Jardine trialling Bodyline Australia-wide. Since the opening match in Perth he’d totally flaunted the spirit of the game by having his two fastest bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce bowl short and straight at the opposing batsmen with as many as seven and eight fieldsmen on the leg side, the majority close-in to take a bunted catch as retreating batsmen reverted to self-preservation. It was confronting and callous cricket – but totally lawful. On the hard Australian pitches where the new ball impacted for only a few overs, Jardine feared Bradman was unstoppable – against traditional methods.

On his appointment, one of his old schoolmasters said Jardine may well win the Ashes, but in the process could easily lose a Dominion.

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