Post-war Career
Johnson's team arrived in Australia late in 1945, but the armed services and Australian Board of Control ordered them to play another series against the various Australian states. The fixtures were meant to revive cricket following the war and were also used as a lead-up to the international tour to New Zealand in March 1946. As a result, Hassett could not appear for Victoria during the 1945–46 season. The Services performed poorly; after playing consecutive draws against Western Australia and South Australia, they were crushed by an innings by both Victoria and New South Wales, before drawing against Queensland and Tasmania, the smallest state. Hassett’s team was saved by the clock against Queensland when the time ran out with the hosts four runs short of their target, but their fortunes were reversed in the final match when Tasmania hung on with only one wicket in hand to salvage a draw.
Hassett ended the Australian summer with 312 runs at 39.00, including three fifties. During the entire Services campaign, he scored 1,434 runs at 49.44 in 18 first-class matches and top-scored for the Australians’ whole campaign with 187. His aggregate was only 13 behind that of all rounder Keith Miller.
Based on his form for the Services, Hassett was selected in the Australian team for a brief five-match tour of New Zealand in February and March 1946. As the military men played poorly in Australia, the national selectors concluded that their achievements against England must have been against weak opposition, and only Hassett and Miller were selected for the Australian tour of New Zealand.
Despite speculation that he would lead the team, as Bradman had made himself unavailable due to concerns over fitness and his ability to play at his pre-war world-leading standards, the Australian Board of Control appointed Bill Brown as captain and O'Reilly as Brown's deputy. In the Board's ballot for the leadership positions, Hassett received only one of the 13 votes, although it was enough to make him the third on-tour selector. One motive speculated for his being overlooked was that he had rested himself from the match against Victoria because he was tired of the long periods in the military away from his family and decided instead to spend the time in Melbourne with his wife and young daughter; this supposedly drew the ire of the Victorian Cricket Association.
On the tour, Hassett made first-class centuries against Auckland (121) and Wellington (143) and scored 19 in the one-off match against New Zealand—retrospectively accredited as a Test—played at Basin Reserve in Wellington on a poor rain-affected pitch that saw the contest finished within two days. The match ended in an easy victory for Australia when New Zealand was bowled out for 42 and 54, but the tour attracted big crowds and made a record profit. Hassett scored 351 runs at 70.20 for the whole tour. By the time he returned home from the tour, Hassett had played cricket continuously for almost twelve months.
Read more about this topic: Lindsay Hassett
Famous quotes containing the words post-war and/or career:
“Much of what Mr. Wallace calls his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still “globaloney.” Mr. Wallace’s warp of sense and his woof of nonsense is very tricky cloth out of which to cut the pattern of a post-war world.”
—Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)