Ernie Toshack With The Australian Cricket Team in England in 1948

Ernie Toshack With The Australian Cricket Team In England In 1948

Source: ], 27 December 2007

Ernie Toshack was a member of Donald Bradman's famous Australian cricket team, which toured England in 1948 and was undefeated in their 34 matches. This unprecedented feat by a Test side touring England earned Bradman's men the sobriquet The Invincibles.

A left-arm medium-pace seam bowler, Toshack was a member of the first-choice team, and played in the first four Test matches before succumbing to a persistent knee injury. Toshack contained the English batsmen with leg theory in between the new ball bursts of Keith Miller and Ray Lindwall. He took 11 wickets in the Tests; his most notable performance was the 5/40 he took in the second innings of the Second Test at Lord's. However, his knee failed in the first innings of the Fourth Test when he took 1/112. He was unable to bowl in the second innings and missed the Fifth Test, marking the end of his Test career.

For the entire tour, Toshack took 50 first-class wickets at a bowling average of 21.12 with four five-wicket innings hauls, including a best of 7/81 against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane. He also took 6/51 in the first innings of the match against the Marylebone Cricket Club, who were almost entirely represented by English Test cricketers, playing a key part in an innings victory. With little batting ability, Toshack usually batted last in Australia's line-up and scored 78 runs at a batting average of 8.66, the worst first-class aggregate and average among the tourists. However, in the Tests, he was dismissed only once and averaged 51.00 with a series of tail-wagging performances, including his career best of 20 not out.

Read more about Ernie Toshack With The Australian Cricket Team In England In 1948:  Background, Early Tour Matches, First Test, Second Test, Third Test, Fourth Test, Role, See Also

Famous quotes containing the words australian, cricket, team and/or england:

    Beyond the horizon, or even the knowledge, of the cities along the coast, a great, creative impulse is at work—the only thing, after all, that gives this continent meaning and a guarantee of the future. Every Australian ought to climb up here, once in a way, and glimpse the various, manifold life of which he is a part.
    Vance Palmer (1885–1959)

    All cries are thin and terse;
    The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
    A cricket like a dwindled hearse
    Crawls from the dry grass.
    Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

    giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
    He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
    And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,
    But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
    “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”
    Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863)

    The real weakness of England lies, not in incomplete armaments or unfortified coasts, not in the poverty that creeps through sunless lanes, or the drunkenness that brawls in loathsome courts, but simply in the fact that her ideals are emotional and not intellectual.
    Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)