Australia Retain the Ashes: A Contest of Skill and Nerve

In a season already rich with drama, Australia’s victory by five wickets to retain the Ashes was perhaps the most compelling of all. This third encounter, necessitated by the fiasco at Manchester, delivered a Test match of exquisite tension and memorable cricket, played out on a pitch that defied easy explanation and rewarded the art of spin.

The Pitch: An Enigma Wrapped in Humidity

From the outset, the wicket offered no comfort to batsmen. It was never easy, and the conditions seemed to favour spin with unusual generosity even on the opening day. One theory was that the humid weather drew moisture to the surface, keeping the pitch deceptively damp. As the match progressed, the surface wore unevenly, accentuating turn and bounce. By Monday, the spinners held court entirely.

For Australia, this proved decisive. O'Reilly, in particular, enjoyed a personal triumph, exploiting the conditions masterfully to capture five wickets in each innings for a combined cost of just 122 runs. His guile and unerring control embodied the potency of spin on this capricious surface.

England’s Incomplete Arsenal

England were undermined even before the contest took full shape. They lost Ames and Hutton to injuries, while Gibb, deputising as wicket-keeper, also succumbed during the game, forcing Price of Middlesex to step in. The selectors’ decision to omit Goddard suggested they had misread the strip; they opted for pace in Farnes and Bowes, unaware that spin would prove the sharper weapon.

This oversight proved costly.

England’s First Innings: Hammond Alone Against the Tide

Winning the toss for a third consecutive time, Hammond once again chose to bat. Yet the decision bore little fruit. Despite his own gallant effort — a commanding 76 out of a modest total of 223 — the innings was marked by hesitancy and error.

Barnett’s long vigil yielded scant reward. Though he survived nearly two and a half hours, his uncertain footwork suggested he was never fully at ease. Hammond’s aggression after lunch momentarily threatened to alter the narrative, but wickets fell in clusters thereafter. A sharp stumping ended Paynter’s resistance; Compton was bowled next over, Price taken at slip soon after. Only a late stand by Wright and Verity added a veneer of respectability. In all, England’s five hours at the crease produced a total that felt fragile.

Australia’s Reply: Bradman and the Art of Command

Wright’s dismissal of Brown with his first ball offered England brief hope. Yet Australia’s reshuffled order, sending B. A. Barnett to partner Fingleton, stabilised their innings beyond expectation. Barnett played his finest Test knock, guiding Australia to a position of strength.

Still, England’s pace pair struck effectively after lunch. With Australia at 145 for five, the game balanced delicately. Enter Bradman. In each of the previous Tests he had registered centuries, and he did so again here, unfurling strokes of clinical precision and defending with impregnable calm. His twelfth century of the tour underscored both his class and his sense of occasion.

England fielded superbly, and Bowes eventually shattered Bradman’s stumps, but not before the Australian captain had shepherded his side to an invaluable lead of 19.

The Turning Point: England’s Second Collapse

England’s response began brightly. Barnett and Edrich constructed the match’s highest partnership, their stand of 60 hinting at an overdue revival. Then, as if on cue, the pitch’s demons re-emerged.

O'Reilly, relentless and clever, bowled 15 overs almost unbroken. With close catchers crowding the leg side, he and Fleetwood-Smith demolished the innings. Hardstaff and Hammond fell to successive balls; Compton was unlucky to be caught off his wrist. Fleetwood-Smith then claimed Verity and Wright in consecutive deliveries, matching O'Reilly’s feat when Farnes and Bowes fell in tandem. England, from overnight promise, were all out for 123 before lunch. This was their lowest total against Australia in 17 years, a stark testament to the spin duo’s stranglehold.

Australia’s Chase: A Nerve-Stretched Finale

Needing just 105 for victory, Australia’s task should have been straightforward. Yet the pursuit was anything but serene. Farnes bowled with commendable venom, and Wright, introduced at 48, sparked a final twist by removing Bradman and McCabe in quick succession. With four down and the light deteriorating ominously, the spectre of a remarkable reversal loomed.

But Hassett’s calm aggression, partnered by Badcock, extinguished England’s hopes. Though Hassett fell with only 14 required, rain delays merely postponed the inevitable. Australia reached their target in under two hours, sealing a victory that, despite the final margin, had crackled with uncertainty.

Reflections: Spin as the Decisive Factor

Ultimately, the match turned on Australia’s superior spin. O'Reilly, with his mesmeric control, was the architect of England’s undoing. Wright showed flashes of similar threat, but he lacked the relentless consistency that O'Reilly maintained. On a pitch that danced to the spinner’s tune, that difference proved insurmountable.

In this absorbing contest — rich in individual feats and collective anxieties — the Ashes were retained not merely by runs and wickets, but by the profound mastery of an ancient craft. Spin, artfully applied, transformed an ordinary strip of turf into a stage for cricketing theatre of the highest order.

Thank You

Faisal Caesar 

Bill O’Reilly: The Tiger Who Bowled with Fury and Precision

In his Farewell to Cricket, Don Bradman dedicated an entire section—titled "The Daddy of Them All"—to the formidable leg-spinner Bill O’Reilly. Few who witnessed cricket in the 1930s would have contested the great batsman’s assertion. O’Reilly was, without question, the most fearsome bowler of his era, an anomaly in a time when batsmen feasted on shirtfront pitches designed to yield monumental scores. On these concrete-hard tracks, where timeless Tests stretched on like Homeric sagas, O’Reilly defied the prevailing orthodoxy. He did not merely bowl; he hunted.

Standing at six feet two, his powerful frame bore the marks of a man shaped by the rugged Australian outback. A prematurely bald scalp gleamed under the sun, drenched in sweat from relentless exertion, for O’Reilly did not view leg-spin as a craft of deception alone—it was a battle waged with brute force. His deliveries came not with the delicate artistry of most spinners but with the venomous bite of a fast bowler. He hurled down leg-breaks, top-spinners, and googlies at a pace bordering on fast-medium. The ball spat and reared, sometimes bouncing to heights that defied logic. Wicketkeepers often found themselves sprawled on the ground, unprepared for the ferocity of his turn.

O’Reilly’s action was a sight to behold—an eruption of whirling limbs, raw aggression, and fire. Jack Fingleton, his close friend and teammate, likened his approach to a storm breaking upon the batsman. Ian Peebles noted that he greeted any scoring stroke not with begrudging admiration but with an impatient demand for the ball’s immediate return. He despised batsmen—not in the impersonal way of a professional competitor, but with a personal and unyielding fury. He was called ‘Tiger’ for a reason.

RC Robertson-Glasgow captured the spectacle with characteristic wit:

"As with those more florid opponents of legendary heroes, there seemed to be more arms than Nature or the rules allow. During the run-up, a sort of fierce galumph, the right forearm worked like a piston; at delivery, the head was ducked low as if to butt the batsman on to his stumps. But it didn't take long to see the greatness—the control of leg-break, top-spinner, and googly; the change of pace and trajectory without apparent change in action; the scrupulous length; the vitality; and, informing and rounding all, the brain to diagnose what patient required what treatment."

A Career Forged in the Bush

O’Reilly’s journey to cricketing immortality began in the small town of White Cliffs, New South Wales, where he played with his three brothers using a gum-wood bat and a crude ball fashioned from banksia root. Being the youngest, he was sentenced to endless hours of bowling, a fate that may well have shaped his legendary temperament.

His introduction to formal cricket came almost by accident. In his first club match for Wingello Juniors, he and his teammates walked seven miles to the ground in Tallong, accompanied by their dogs chasing rabbits along the way. Later, while studying at Sydney University in the summer of 1925-26, O’Reilly was coaxed into playing a festival match in Bowral.

It was there that he encountered, for the first time, a 17-year-old Don Bradman. The boy wonder finished the first day at 234 not out, a staggering reminder that this was no ordinary opponent. A week later, however, O’Reilly found himself bowling with the sun shining, birds singing, and flowers in full bloom. With the first ball of the day, he delivered a ripping leg-break that jagged from leg stump to hit the off bail. Suddenly, cricket was the best game in the whole wide world.

That was the beginning of a relationship marked by mutual respect, simmering tensions, and unspoken resentments.

Ashes Glory and the Tiger’s Wrath

O’Reilly’s Test debut came in 1932 against South Africa, but it was in the infamous Bodyline series that he made his name. While the world fixated on Harold Larwood’s thunderbolts, O’Reilly methodically dismantled England with 27 wickets. Four years later, in England, he was even more devastating. At Old Trafford, he produced a spell of staggering brilliance—dismissing Cyril Walters, Bob Wyatt, and Wally Hammond in the space of four balls.

His finest hour, however, came in the 1936-37 Ashes, a series Neville Cardus immortalized in Australian Summer. Bradman, now captain, led Australia back from a 0-2 deficit to a 3-2 victory, a feat of rare resilience. Yet behind the scenes, controversy brewed. The veteran leg-spinner Clarrie Grimmett had been unceremoniously dropped from the squad. O’Reilly, furious at his long-time partner’s omission, blamed Bradman, believing that Grimmett had been punished for an offhand comment about the captain avoiding express pace.

Despite the simmering discord, O’Reilly continued to dominate. In the decisive Adelaide Test, he took five wickets in the first innings and three in the second, ensuring Australia’s historic comeback.

The Final Battles and the War’s Intervention

By the 1938 Ashes, cricket had become a bowlers’ graveyard. England’s batsmen, bloated on lifeless pitches, amassed runs at will. At The Oval, they piled up a staggering 903 for 7, yet O’Reilly remained indomitable. His 3 for 178 in 85 overs was a testament to his unrelenting spirit. At Leeds, he single-handedly won the Test with a ten-wicket match haul.

The Second World War then intervened, halting his career in its prime. He played just one more Test—against New Zealand in 1946—bowling with all the ferocity of his youth, taking 5 for 14 and 3 for 19 before throwing his boots out of the dressing-room window in a final act of defiance.

He retired with 144 wickets in 27 Tests at 22.59, a staggering record given the batsman-friendly conditions of the 1930s. Against England alone, he took 102 wickets, dismissing Wally Hammond—a colossus of the time—on ten occasions.

A Life Beyond Cricket: The Tiger in the Press Box

O’Reilly’s impact did not end with his playing days. As a cricket writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, his prose was sharp, evocative, and deeply Australian. He attacked selectors with unrelenting honesty, especially when they overlooked young leg-spinners. His wit was legendary—he once described a Queensland cricketer as having a style where "you could smell the gum leaves off him."

But it was in the press box, alongside Jack Fingleton, that his old battles resurfaced. The duo became known for their scathing critiques of Bradman. When the great batsman was famously bowled for a duck in his final Test, O’Reilly and Fingleton reportedly collapsed into hysterics, much to Neville Cardus’s dismay.

The rift between O’Reilly and Bradman ran deep. Sectarian tensions had existed in the Australian team of the 1930s—O’Reilly, Fingleton, and Stan McCabe were Catholics, while Bradman, an austere Protestant, embodied an entirely different ethos. "You have to play under a Protestant to know what it's like," O’Reilly once grumbled.

Yet, in his final years, he could not deny Bradman’s genius. When asked how batsmen like Greg Chappell and Allan Border compared, he dismissed them with a characteristic shrug—"Child’s play."

When O’Reilly passed away in 1992, Bradman’s tribute was simple yet profound:

"The greatest bowler I ever faced or watched."

The Tiger had roared his last.

Thank You 

Faisal Caesar