The Test that nearly stopped

The card for the seventh Test at Sydney in 1971 is the card of an ordinary win. England 184 and 302, Australia 264 and 160, England won by 62 runs, series won 2-0 with one abandoned. Its one note under match flow reads: T. J. Jenner retired hurt on 8 from 195 for seven to 235 for eight, hit on the head by a short ball from Snow.

The match on the card

Australia put England in and bowled them out for 184, Ray Illingworth 42, Kerry O’Keeffe and Terry Jenner three wickets each. Australia replied with 264, Greg Chappell 65, Ian Redpath 59. England’s second innings was 302, Brian Luckhurst 59, John Edrich 57, and the target was 223. Australia made 160, Keith Stackpole 67, Illingworth three for 39 from 20 overs. The Test was a six-day match and ended on the fifth.

Full scorecard: Australia v England, 7th Test, Sydney, 12–17 February 1971 →

The note

Australia had been 13 for two at the close of the first day and were 235 for seven at the close of the second, Greg Chappell 62 not out. Jenner was hit on that second afternoon with Australia 195 for seven.

He went off and came back at 235 for eight, and finished with 30. The card records the retirement and the return, the score at each, and the cause. It records nothing else about the over, the umpire, the crowd, or the minutes in which England’s eleven were not on the field.

What is not on it

After the ball that hit Jenner, umpire Lou Rowan warned Snow for intimidatory bowling, not for the first time in the series. When Snow went back to his fielding position at long leg he was pelted with bottles, cans and pies, and a spectator took hold of him until others pulled the man off.

Illingworth took his side to the dressing room without the umpires’ permission, which had not been done in a Test before, and the Australian board’s secretary told him that if they did not come back at once the match and the Ashes would be forfeited. They came back.

None of that has a column. The card shows Snow with 18 overs and one wicket in the innings, and two overs in the second innings, which is where the other thing not on the card sits. Fielding on the boundary in the run chase he broke a finger on the wooden fence going for a six off Stackpole, was taken to hospital, and bowled no more.

Why it is a ghost

A forfeited Test would have appeared on the card as a result, awarded, with the innings incomplete. This one appears as a result, won, with every innings complete, and the note on Jenner is the only sign of the moment when the match nearly became the other thing. The card records what was played. It has no way of recording what was almost not.

Ken Eastwood, opening for Australia, made 5 and 0 and bowled five overs, and never played again: the card’s coverage list calls it one Test, two caps, Tony Dell being the other debutant. The umpires were Rowan and Tom Brooks. It is Test number 679, and the series line under it, England won the seven-match series 2-0 with one abandoned, is the Ashes changing hands.

What the card holds

A win by 62 and a series won 2-0. A note about a retirement, with the score before and after. A fast bowler with 18 overs in one innings and two in the next. A one-cap opener. And a result that reads as any other, on a card that was one decision away from reading as something no Ashes card has ever read.

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No. 8 in Ghost Games, a series of 9.

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