Nought, second ball

Don Bradman walked out at the Oval on 14 August 1948 with Australia 117 for one, in what everybody in the ground knew was his last Test innings. He had 6,996 Test runs. Four more would have left him with an average of a hundred.

Eric Hollies bowled him second ball for nought.

The morning before it

England had chosen to bat and been bowled out for 52 in 42.1 overs. Len Hutton made 30 from 124 balls and was the last man out, caught behind off Ray Lindwall. The other ten made 16 between them, five of them nought. Lindwall took six for 20 and Keith Miller bowled eight overs, five of them maidens, for five runs and two wickets.

Australia then batted, and Sid Barnes and Arthur Morris put on 117 for the first wicket before Barnes was caught behind off Hollies for 61. Bradman came in. The next entry in the fall of wickets reads 2-117.

Two balls, one minute

The Australian batting card for that innings gives balls faced and minutes for exactly one man. Barnes, Morris, Lindsay Hassett and the rest have a dash in those columns, because the scorers of 1948 did not keep them. Bradman’s line reads 0 runs, 2 balls, 1 minute.

Somebody counted. Of the eleven innings in that Australian total, the one that took two deliveries is the one the record kept the deliveries for, and that is not an accident of scoring. It is what a record does with a moment it knows is a moment.

The arithmetic

He had played 52 Tests and batted 80 times, ten of them not out, which is the arithmetic that made four runs matter. Seven thousand divided by seventy is a hundred exactly. 6,996 divided by seventy is 99.94. The four runs were not on the card, only the nought was. Bradman’s average finished at 99.94. Every account of the innings begins with the number he needed and ends with the number he got, and the card carries only the second.

Full scorecard: England v Australia, 5th Test, The Oval, 14–18 August 1948 →

The other men

Morris made 196 and was run out. He batted 406 minutes, and the man at the other end when he passed a hundred and a hundred and fifty was not Bradman. Australia made 389.

Hollies bowled 56 overs and took five for 131. He had Barnes caught behind, bowled Bradman, stumped Miller, and had Neil Harvey and Don Tallon caught. Five wickets in a Test innings against the 1948 Australians was a rare return, and it is remembered for one of them.

England made 188 in their second innings, Hutton 64. Australia won by an innings and 149 runs and the series 4-0. The match is Test number 303, and the umpires were Dai Davies and Herbert Baldwin.

What the card cannot weigh

A card gives each innings a line and gives each line the same width. Morris’s 196 and Bradman’s 0 sit one above the other in the same type. One was the highest score of the match and the other was two balls long, and the two-ball one is the reason the card is looked at.

England’s 52 is on the same page, and would be a famous number on any other card. Here it is the innings before the innings.

What the card holds

Two wickets at 117 to the same bowler. A nought with a ball count and a minute count that nobody else in the innings was given. A 196 above it. And a result, an innings and 149, that is the least remembered thing on a card everybody has looked at.

••••••

No. 13 in The Other Guy, a series of 24.

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