Australian Cricket Team in England in 1948 - Significance

Significance

The 1948 Australian team has great significance in cricket history as it is the only side to tour England unbeaten, earning the sobriquet The Invincibles. The tour was captain Donald Bradman's last Test series, and the immediate postwar team was the most successful that Bradman appeared in. It has been claimed that English cricket suffered more heavily from the effects of World War II than the Australians. Even so, various commentators have rated the 1948 Australians as one of the best cricket teams ever, and it is often compared to other great outfits such as the 1902 Australian touring team, Warwick Armstrong's Australian side of just after World War I, the West Indies team of the 1980s and the Australian team of the 1990s and 2000s. This was not a view shared by Jack Fingleton, Bradman's batting rival from the 1930s, who wrote 'the 1948 Australian side to England, side that some critics, ignoring the apparent lack of strength in English cricket that season, dubbed the "best Australian team ever" - which was just moonshine. Yorkshire almost beat the Australians of 1948', but his view is very much in the minority.

The high regard with which The Invincibles are held in the annals of Australian and world cricket is reflected in the various honours accorded to the players. Bradman, Lindwall and Miller were among the ten inaugural inductees into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 1996. Hassett, Morris and Harvey were later inducted, so that 20% of the inductees are from the 1948 team. Of these six, all except Hassett were selected in Australia's Team of the Century, with Bradman as captain and Miller his deputy. Bradman, Lindwall, Miller and Harvey are among a group of only 14 Australians in a total of 60 players who have been inducted into the International Cricket Council's Hall of Fame. In The Ten Greatest Test Teams by Tom Graveney with Norman Miller ten teams were compared by a computer and the 1948 Australians emerged second behind the 1984 West Indians. Graveney strongly disagreed with the result, writing 'there has not been a better team in my lifetime than Don Bradman's Australian tourists of 1948'. The computer regarded Sam Loxton as a member of the team as his played more Tests in the series than Neil Harvey, if Harvey had been picked the Australians would have been the superior team.