by The Professor » Sun Feb 02, 2020 5:33 pm
After witnessing the first ever whitewash of England, for my third trip I would need to cheer my spirits with a visit to a reverse fixture where England were back at their dominant best. So, I will turn back the dial of my Cricketing Time Machine and jump back to before The Great War when England was a green and pleasant land and they beat a much-fancied Australian side. Just for kicks though I would land my machine in Australia and take the ship over to England with the boys to see how high their spirits were – and how low they would become by the end of the tour.
In the early 1900s, Australia were a team in flux. One area where they showed this best was that they didn’t quite know who they wanted to captain them on their eleventh Test-playing tour of England. Monty Noble was the incumbent captain as he had led the Baggy Greens on a tour of New Zealand as well as having captained them in the last Ashes series where he had led his team to a 2-3 loss to England. There was a lack of confidence in the New South Welshman. So, what do you do when you are desperate? You see if an ex will take you back! In the earliest era of Australian cricket, the squad selected their own captain which saw a great period of flux at the helm. Joe Darling had been dropped as captain mid-way through the Ashes series of 1901-2 and replaced by Hugh Trumble, who had since retired. This exile did not last long as he was the man in charge in the 1902-3 tour of South Africa which they won 2-0 – but the fickle team sent Darling back to being a squad player at the end of the series. Now, when they were looking for an experienced figure for a tricky Ashes tour, they called him back for his third stint with the captain’s armband at age 35. Noble was elected vice-captain.
As they boarded the boat, Australia would have been in high spirits. They had a great record running up to this series and they would have been confident that they would have given the English a run for their money. They had no idea what was awaiting them.
Stanley Jackson had forged a team in his own image. Having been a major player in the world of English cricket since he made his name playing for Eton in 1888, Jackson had gone from strength to strength and had mustered a team around him that could meet his high standards – and even he himself took his game to the next level in this series. He was the highest run scorer with 492 and the joint third highest wicket taker with 13. Almost every game saw a highlight for the Yorkshireman. Figures of 5/52 in the First Test were followed up with 4/50 in the second – both times England’s best figures of the match. Not content with being the best bowler in his side, in the next two Tests he was his team’s highest scoring batsman with 144* in the Third and 113 in the Fourth. One of the biggest pulls to this series for me is the performances of Jackson – I am firmly of the belief that if his performances came around in the televised era his name would be alongside the likes of Botham as one of England’s great allrounders. These were his last Test matches as he began to focus more on his burgeoning political career – he is the holder of a record that will never be broken; 20 Home Tests, 0 away.
It was not all doom and gloom for Australia as they too had a standout player in the form of Warwick Armstrong. In our last journey we saw Armstrong at the end of his career – so it would be fascinating to go back to the start of his personal journey and see the series that made him as a player. Having made his debut in the previous Ashes series and looked impressive, 1905 was Armstrong’s coming of age tour. Across the whole tour, which started in Crystal Palace in April in a match versus ‘The Gentlemen’ and ended 33 days later in Hastings against a South of England XI, Armstrong scored 2000 runs and 200 wickets. This feat was only achieved due to the benevolence of an old timer who had once played for England himself. W.G. Grace, captaining the South of England side, declared early so that Armstrong could get his last few runs to tick over the 2000 mark. Despite the strength that he showed on the tour, when it came to the big event of the Test series, Armstrong did not deliver. His best figures were 3/30 in the Second Test but other than that he looked anonymous – averaging 31.5 with the bat and doing slightly better with the ball but never making a huge mark on an individual innings. He would, of course, go on to have a long career for Australia and would end up taking the armband in 1920.
The two Test matches that were taken to completion, the First at Trent Bridge and the Fourth at Old Trafford, were not hugely entertaining cricketing spectacles. The Australian bowling was taciturn and was designed to strangle the English batsmen – this plan worked in the first innings of the First Test as England stumbled to 196 all out with Frank Laver getting seven scalps as wickets fell regularly. In the second innings, however, England let themselves go with three batsmen scoring 50 runs or more: Archie MacLaren top scoring with 140, and England declaring on 426-5. England then reversed the first innings total and rocketed Australia out for 188 and won by 213 runs. The Old Trafford victory was even more decisive with England only having to bat once. It was Jackson’s 113 that made life difficult for the Australian bowlers as England racked up 446. In reply they fell three runs short of 200 with Walter Brearly getting a four-fer. When they followed on they got even fewer – 169 and another four-fer for Brearly. The Ashes were in the hands of the English.
On their return to Australia there was a huge conflict in Australian cricket that lasted for the next decade. There was a growing divide between the players and the Board of Control and schisms in the squad were apparent even as this series ended. The majority of the team arrived in England together – with Darling coming later – however they all left on no fewer than four different boats. Victor Trumper has a good excuse as he and his wife took a holiday in Europe, however Darling and four other players left on the 15th September and sailed directly to Perth, Noble and four of his pals went from London and went directly to Adelaide leaving Armstrong and the rest of his team to follow a full month after the first party left. Darling insisted that this did not represent a divide in the team – but it certainly does not suggest a world of unity in this defeated outfit. England had won with so much dominance that it had split the team apart. Such was the effect of the defeat that Australian cricket remodelled itself and soon enough a Cricket Board of Authority was created to ensure such a loss would never be repeated. One of the most destructive English victories in cricketing history and well worth a visit.
"It has been said of the unseen army of the dead, on their everlasting march, that when they are passing a rural cricket ground the Englishman falls out of the ranks for a moment to look over the gate and smile."