After some discussion of the straightforward writing style, Cardus notes that the great man discloses little of how he learned to bat and, being also a music critic, he compares this to Wagner’s biography which similarly gives no clues as to the development of the great composer’s gifts. The reader is left to marvel at the sheer implausibility of the bare statistics though there is some inkling of the Don’s philosophy in the magazine’s feature – after making 118 in his debut first-class innings, he struggled for a couple of innings including a duck – “Since that day I have never made up my mind what to do with a ball before it has been bowled. I commend this advice to all players.”

Cardus makes most of two specific episodes which bookend Bradman’s Test career, those being the Ikin “catch” and of course Bodyline. Both of these elements of Ashes folklore have been superbly dealt with in great detail by our own Martin Chandler, first with A Fine Way to Start a Bloody Series and then Bodyline!, as well as individual pieces on many of the main protagonists including Larwood, Jardine and Bradman himself. I urge those reading to avail themselves of Martin’s features.

First, the Ikin catch. The scene was Brisbane during the first Test of the 1946/47 rubber. Bradman came in with the score at 46/2 and, after a shaky start, he chopped a ball from Voce to Ikin, stationed at second slip. Here is Bradman’s description of events: “Voce bowled me a ball which was near enough to a yorker. I attempted to chop down on top of it in order to guide the ball wide of the slip fieldsman. Instead it flew to Ikin at second slip. In my opinion, the ball touched the bottom of my bat just before hitting the ground and, therefore, it was not a catch. Accordingly I stood my ground waiting for the game to proceed. Somewhat belatedly there was an appeal. Without the slightest hesitation umpire Borwick at the bowler’s end said ‘Not out.’ The score was 74/2 at that time and Bradman then went on with Hassett to add 276 for a third-wicket record. 74/3 was instead 322/3 and that is why the incident engendered so much discussion. It should be noted that England lost by an innings and 332 runs.

In the aforementioned feature A Fine Bloody Way to Start a Series Martin has researched every one of the protagonists who have either written a biography or had one written about them, as well as the existing tour books, and I have no qualms in taking advantage of his efforts. The live broadcaster, Cliff Cary, announced it as a catch, though he was of course quite some distance away. Bradman thought it was not out as did his batting partner Lindsay Hassett. Indeed it seems the players were split basically by nationality, though some, such as Colin McCool weren’t sure one way or the other. This wasn’t necessarily true in the case of those observing but not playing, though Bill O’Reilly and Jack Fingleton, who both the catch was good, are well-known detractors of Bradman. Cardus quotes from Cyril Washbrook’s book The Silver Lining, as does Martin – Washbrook was in no doubt the catch was good, and states that all of the England fielders close enough to the wicket were similarly convinced. Crucially, and most importantly, the umpires both considered that it was not out.

As regards Bodyline, Cardus notes “Sir Donald argues the case against Bodyline with dignity and shrewdness.” Bradman calls as his principle witnesses Plum Warner, Jack Hobbs and Wally Hammond (“I condemn it absolutely”), while Cardus takes the opportunity to point out that he ploughed a lone furrow among English writers in denouncing the practice: “When the Jardine-Larwood campaign was at its height, and people in this country seemed to think there was no difference between leg-theory and fast bowling bouncing high and persistently at the batsman, bowled to a leg-side field of six to eight men, I found myself alone among writers on the game in condemning this form of attack.” Indeed, Cardus’ piece on Monday 16 January 1933 following the battle of Adelaide was entitled ‘Hooligans’, and as David Frith wrote in Bodyline Autopsy ‘In the Manchester Guardian [Cardus] challenged [Bodyline’s] morality, displayed his revulsion at violence and intimidation, and probably had a guiding hand in the paper’s leader which suggested it might be best to cancel the last two Tests and abandon international cricket for 10 years.” Cardus did make it clear in his article that he was in England and not actually following the tour.

Cardus goes on: “I asked those who abused me and called me pro-Australian to wait to see whether English batsmen would tolerate continuous fast bouncers to a leg-field after the Jardine-Larwood campaign had been fought and won.” Cardus does admit that his objection to Bodyline was largely on aesthetic grounds – “I didn’t wish to see batsmanship reduced to hits made in one direction…or see a cricket field and a cricket crowd a roaring ferment of bad blood.”

Confirming Cardus’ claim of being at the time the sole voice of dissension, other headlines in England included “Woodfull sulks in his tent” (the Sketch), “Woodfull snubs Warner” (Daily Mail) and “Woodfull rebukes English manager” (unknown). Wilfred Rhodes, writing in the Yorkshire Evening Post, opined: “The leg theory which is being employed by our fast bowlers has got the Australians rattled as badly as the terrific bumpers of Gregory and the pace of McDonald got our batsmen rattled…neither Voce nor Larwood will look anything like so formidable to the batsmen as Gregory did when he was over here and at his best in 1921. He hit a few men…” He then went on to mention Warwick Armstrong’s use of slow leg theory – what goes around, comes around. Later, New Wisden editor Sidney Southerton proclaimed Jardine’s captaincy to have been touched by genius and that he’d shown great pluck. According to David Frith, Jim Swanton did not make his feelings on Bodyline known until after Jardine’s death. Clearly Cardus was, as he said, in a minority when the controversy was boiling.

However, in Bodyline Hypocrisy, Michael Arnold notes “In Manchester a doubting Neville Cardus had read enough (and had probably been to the newsreel cinema too). He turned to Dr Johnson’s words: “knock the man down first and be compassionate afterwards.” And yet even Cardus was not immune to the schismatic thinking that Bodyline has induced: he wrote that “the sturdy little man from Nottingham has got rid of stalemate”…He advocated that a statue of Harold Larwood be erected in London, for his performance was the kind that Tom Richardson, the outstanding fast bowler of the 1890s, would have recognised and loved.”

As regards Douglas Jardine, Cardus was certainly an admirer of the England captain, describing him as the ‘strongest of all captains of cricket’ and had written in the Observer prior to the tour that “absurd stories are going around that Jardine is a combination of a Prussian junker and schoolmaster Dr Switchem with his cane. But if the Australians are to be tackled, give me a captain who smiles only when the enemy are being rubbed into the dust.” Writing in Measure for Measure, Cardus stated firmly “Australia being Australia, and the ‘Hillâ€?being the ‘Hill’—il faut cultiver notre Jardine.”

Schismatic thinking indeed.

This particular edition was significant as it included a celebration of the 61st birthday of Neville Cardus, written by the great man himself. The piece included a photo of Cardus bowling in 1938, when aged 50 but looking somewhat older. Cardus relates that he was transformed from being an association football fan in 1899 (“soccer” being apparently a term confined to the upper classes at that time) to being a die-hard cricket fan by the following summer, but that he couldn’t remember what specifically had caused such a transformation to take place, although he had initially begun watching cricket to poke fun at the ‘la-di-da’ types who played such a soft game. In the process of this reminiscence, he introduced this reader to a word with which I was not previously familiar, i.e. ‘contumely”, as in ‘as we lay on the grass we shouted contumely at the players’, which means (for those like me who weren’t previously aware) insolent or insulting language – no doubt CW’s own Neville Cardus already knew that.

Cardus grew up watching cricket while firmly entrenched in its Golden Age and the impact of that period clearly shaped his future writing career, as he introduced a romance to cricket writing which was previously absent. He describes in detail a match which took place one Whit Monday between Lancashire and Kent, when the visitor’s opener Cuthbert ‘Pinky’ Burnup, who incidentally was capped for England at football, rescued Kent from 13/3 to 401/6 by scoring exactly 200 not out – in Cardus’ opinion, ‘this day could be quoted as a kind of graph of the temperature of first-class cricket of the Golden Age’.

CB Fry acheived a feat in 1901 which has since been equalled, by Don Bradman and Mike Procter, but never broken, that of six consecutive First-Class hundreds. By 1950, however, Cardus had this to say: ‘We have waxed fat on records now; the currency has depreciated. We have lost the blessings and grace of innocence.’ He goes on: ‘I have no use for those who live in the past’ while reprising one of his more evocative comparisons, which he usually applied to Bradman, of the aeroplane and swallow to illustrate the difference between ‘the mechanical and the vital.’

Cardus had more to say about the state of cricket in 1950 as compared to that enjoyed during the Golden Age: ‘County captains should order any batsman to get out if he is not scoring quickly enough, and goes protectively into a shell because he is approaching yet another “century”.’ Interesting use of quotations there. As a shining example of the type of batsman he favoured, he holds up Ranji: ‘an innings by him was a tribute from the Orient to the glory of the Victorian sunset and the dawn that came up like thunder, too soon to blaze down, with the Edwardian succession’; I honestly can’t imagine any other cricket writer coming up with such a description, or being allowed to get away with writing it for that matter.

As far as his opinion of the best ever, Cardus rates Hobbs as the best all-round batsman he’d ever seen, Trumper the most gallant, the aforementioned Ranji the most magical, Macartney the most impertinent, JT Tyldesley the most brilliant on a sticky wicket and at his best a stroke player in a thousand, Woolley the ‘most lordly in effortless power’, Spooner the most courteous, Leyland the most obstinate, Compton the most likeable, George Gunn the most original, Hammond the most magnificent, Maclaren the most majestic, while it is no doubt Cardus’ romantic view which instructs his estimation of Bradman as the most ‘ruthlessly reliable’.

Of the men at the other end of the pitch, his favourite among the fast men were McDonald, Larwood and Walter Brearley, while he finds praise also for SF Barnes, Tate, O’Reilly, Grimmett, Blythe, Rhodes, Trumble, and Noble…’ after all, as the photo above confirms, he was ‘in my way, a bowler myself!”

As enjoyable as the birthday piece was, the second piece by Cardus in the same publication is decidedly more eye-opening to modern readers. Entitled ‘No Ashes, but Plenty of Fire”, this piece features his preview of the upcoming West Indies tour of England. It is prefaced by a great photo of a youthful looking Frank Worrell, as well as Everton Weekes and Robert Christiani, all of whom had made their debuts when the England team had toured the Caribbean a couple of years earlier.

Cardus performs a service to his readers by introducing them to a number of early West Indian cricketers, including George Challenor, CA Olivierre and Lebrun Constantine, father of Learie. However in so doing, he employs one or two phrases which are somewhat jarring to the modern reader. While it is perhaps harsh to judge those of a bygone age against our relatively recently accepted, but hopefully more enlightened standards of inclusion, nonetheless there are some eye-opening sentiments expressed in this piece, such as ‘large smiles redolent of water melons’ and, in describing the friendliness of Derek Sealy (at least I assume that is who ‘J Sealey’ refers to), making a reference to ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’. I realise I may be displaying a little too much sensitivity, however Cardus also warns against the ‘Old Adam” breaking out which, for those of you unfamiliar with the phrase, is referring to humans in their unredeemed state. Finally, a precursor of Tony Grieg 25 years later, though perhaps not quite as forthright, can be found in Cardus’ summing up of the lack of readiness of the 1928 visit of the West Indies cricket team to England, noting they were too ‘naive in its endeavour and changes of mood…a sudden blow of bad luck! – the outlook darkened at once.’ Different times indeed.

Cardus does however offer Headley as possibly being the greatest batsman of all time, ahead even of Bradman, whilst also crediting him with toughening the fibre of West Indies cricket – ‘Headley lent a contemporary and cosmopolitan sophistication to the sound foundations laid down almost single-handedly by Challenor.’

As many readers will know, it was during the 1950 tour that Sonny Ramadhin and Alfred Valentine (referred to in his article as ‘A Ramadhin and V Valentine’) laid waste to the cream of England’s batting; it is possible that the latter was confusing Vincent Valentine, who played a couple of Tests before the war, but as our resident cricket tragic Martin points out, Ramadhin was never endowed with a Christian name and was dubbed ‘Sonny’, though he was also apparently assigned the initials ‘KT’ by an over-officious customs official prior to an Atlantic crossing. It may have been the sight of Valentine which suggested the comment ‘It is another sign of the greater introspection that is coming to West Indies cricket, as it is drawn into the circle of a world “civilisation”, that their players are taking to spectacles.’

Nonetheless Cardus signs off with ‘Every lover of cricket will rejoice to see the West Indies holding their own with our best’ – well, they certainly managed that.

In the September 1948 issue, the first item of interest to cricket fans is a “Cinestrip” which shows “magic eye” photos of Lindsey Hassett, illustrating to aspiring batsmen how to execute the leg glance. But the main cricket interest is in that issue’s piece by famed cricket scribe Neville Cardus on “Cricket’s Peter Pan”, the eternally youthful Denis Compton, which opens ‘I have always fancied that a cricketer – if he is in possession of an instinctive technique – somehow expresses his personality and the period in which he was born.’ Contrasting the more mature technique of Bradman with the boyish exuberance of Compton, he notes the latter “runs between the wickets with an invisible school satchel flapping behind his back, elbows up, in a hurry and a little late…No wonder he is the most popular cricketer of all in the estimation of boys and girls everywhere.’ Compare that with the young folk of Australia, whom Cardus has never heard ‘crowing like cocks at the appearance through the pavilion gate of Bradman. The applause has always been…rather elderly.’ Keith Miller, meanwhile, represents young Australia’s ‘conception of glamour in action on the cricket field.’ The difference, Cardus goes on, comes from the fact that ‘hundreds of years of living, in all the ways of experience, are required to evolve and perfect a Compton.’ This somewhat romantic view might explain why Australia’s alleged apparent seriousness has always resulted in more success than England has enjoyed.

Cardus does however discuss Englishman Douglas Jardine in terms equivalent to his more forthright description of Australian cricketers, even going so far as to use the phrase ‘un-English’. He then goes on to discuss the relative ‘Englishness’ of the other Test nations, New Zealand and South Africa being more so than those who wear the baggy green, with the point being that Compton is quintessentially English specifically in regard to his cricketing character. Such unconcealed nationalism, evidenced by the use of terms like ‘not racially English lands’ when referring to such far-flung parts of the old empire as India, is a little eye-opening and reminds the present day reader that these pieces are now 70 years old – different times indeed.

In the following issue of October 1948, Cardus penned a farewell to Bradman entitled ‘The Wizard of the Willow’. After his first innings in Britain, 236 against Worcestershire in 1930, the great Wilfred Rhodes noted he was ‘the best back-footed player’ he had ever seen; later that summer a newspaper headline trumpeted BRADMAN FAILS, after he had been dismissed at Glamorgan for a “paltry” 58. According to Cardus, Bradman’s great contribution had not been in the advancement of technique but with ‘an incredible concentration of a new economy.’ Although being past his peak, Bradman in 1948 scored more than 500 Test runs at 72.57 despite two ducks, the highlight being an innings of 173* at Headingley, taking his Test average at that ground to an incredible 232.50. Even so, Cardus considers WG Grace to be in ‘another dimension’ while pointing out the poor state of the wickets which the Grand Old Man played on. Strangely, the statistics quoted for Bradman’s Test career are incorrect – 80 innings, 10 not out, 6988 runs at 99.82; I’m not aware that eight runs were subsequently credited to him.

Cardus’ praise of Bradman is admittedly a little grudging with a sort of ‘yes, but…’ qualification to it all, such as ‘cold-blooded yet thrilling’ or ‘a ruthless little man, but with it all, a pretty humour’ and finally a questioning ‘Greatest of all?’, which Cardus answers with Grace’s famous pronouncement of ‘Give me Arthur [Shrewsbury].’ As Bradman retired 100 years after the birth of WG Grace, Cardus noted that ‘the great wheel has come full circle.’

Finally in 1948, the December edition sees Cardus waxing lyrical in ‘Cricket by the hearth’. This was a more fanciful piece imagining a session in the psychiatrist’s chair with Cardus responding to word-association. ‘Batsmanship’ brings to his mind CB Fry, of whom he writes ‘His influence on batsmanship has been stronger than anybody’s, including Hobbs and Bradman, since WG and Arthur Shewsbury.’ This piece allows Cardus to give full rein to his story-telling side, featuring Emmett Robinson subbing from the members seats at Leeds, and AC Maclaren captaining Stanley Jackson, “Plum” Warner and Gilbert Jessop at Lord’s.

Also in this issue, Rand Daily Mail journalist Paul Irwin discussed the probables for South Africa’s team to face the MCC in the latter’s upcoming tour, considering that Dudley Nourse may be an overly cautious captain, and that Eric Rowan would return to the side despite being now 39. As it turned out, Rowan averaged over 50 while a sporting declaration by Nourse in the final Test, rather than taking the safe option of forcing a draw but losing the series, brought much excitement with the chance of a possible victory to square the series.

Finally, the Scrapbook of Sport regales readers with the story of how the Duke of Queensberry won a heavy wager that he could not, in those days of horse transport, send a letter 50 miles in a short tim??e. He won the bet by enclosing the letter inside a cricket ball and engaging a team to stand in a circle and pass it rapidly round until the distance had been covered. Presumably not a Murali among them.

Lockhart was himself a very interesting character, having been a footballer, writer and secret agent, in the latter capacity being teamed with Sidney Reilly, of Reilly, Ace of Spies fame, that miniseries being based on the original book Ace of Spies written by Lockhart’s son, Robin Bruce Lockhart.

In the Scrapbook of Sport cartoon section of June 1948’s World Sports, there are two cricket items – first, the Six page bat, featuring the story of the cricket bat which Victor Trumper used to score a century against England in 1902, and which carries 400 autographs; the bat had to be split into sections to accomm??odate them all. Secondly, we learn that William Clarke, who opened the Trent Bridge cricket ground, was not selected for the annual Players vs Gentlemen fixture until he had been in the game for 30 years.

There appears a commercial for The Ashes, a preview of the forthcoming visit of Bradman’s soon-to-be Invincibles, which was penned by Neville Cardus and available for the princely sum of one shilling (no doubt much more valuable now – perhaps the aforementioned Mr. Chandler can comment).

In Cardus’ piece this month, he writes about the 50-year anniversary of Trent Bridge being awarded its first Test, describing the delights of walking on the grass and watching the cricket at the same time, such as when McCabe played his wonderful innings of 232, glorious with the sunset of lost causes. Also how it was still possible for small boys to watch their heroes in the nets, whereas at Old Trafford they were obliged to crane their necks through iron rails which separated the hoi-polloi from the practice ground – I remember getting my head stuck, apparently beyond withdrawal for ever, because I had prised it too far forward to look at Ranjitsinhji in the distance. Hard to picture Cardus as a young boy. He speaks of how author JM Barrie would attend Tests at Trent Bridge, but that wild horses wouldn’t have dragged him to Manchester.

In that first Test at Trent Bridge, WG Grace had made his final appearance, scoring 28 and 1, taking 0 for 37 and fielding with difficulty and much excess of flesh. In the next Test played at Nottingham, in 1905, Archie Maclaren played one of the most majestic of all innings, scoring 140 and as captain had given BJT Bosanquet, at that time novel, uncharted and anathema, just long enough to find his length and subsequently go through the Australian innings with 8/10??7.

Bradman scored his first Test match century in England there in 1930 while later in Australia’s second innings Stan McCabe was shaping up to win it for England – enter one Sydney Copley, England substitute, emerging from anonymity and into history…Copley’s catch will be spoken of at Trent Bridge as long as lovers of the game gather together with unfaded memories.

As to Nottinghamshire’s most famous fast bowling son, Cardus had asked another famous Notts man George Gunn, who he thought was the fastest, Harold Larwood or Australia’s Ray Lindwall. Gunn, who had possessed the temerity to come down the pitch to Ted Macdonald and in 1907-08 had dressed impudence in garments of brilliance, took one or two pulls at his pipe, removed it from his mouth, and in his soft, lazy voice said: “You’re not asking me that question seriously, are you, now?”

Cardus loved the fast bowlers, and not just those of the highest quality – Until every county can boast again a Buckenham, a Field, a Skelding, a Howell, a Bestwick, a Warren, a Wass…until then, the game will remain weak in red corpuscles. Wass, a Trent Bridge favourite, was, unusually for a fast bowler, at his best on a spinner’s pitch.

He wraps up with this plea: Let our cricketers play up and play the game. They’ll never be so young again.

In the July 1948 edition, Cardus celebrates the birth of WG Grace exactly 100 years before. In a first-class career covering 46 years, the Grand Old Man amassed 54,896 runs in 1388 innings with an average of 39.55, as well as 2,864 wickets at 17.97 – and, as ACM Croome used to say “some of them must have been out.” Cardus goes on to note that it is profane to quote figures to celebrate the genius of the greatest player of them all – Just as all music-lovers cannot recall the time when they hadn’t heard of Bach, so with lovers of cricket and WG Grace…his name and his career are dates in general knowledge, like 1066 and Magna Charta…grandmothers died in hundreds amongst the lower orders, having presumably held out until the great man had been ret?urned to the pavilion.

WG was Atlas holding up in his hand, but as though it were a cricket ball, the world in which all other and later cricketers enjoy their brief day. As noted in the Jubilee Book of Cricket, with his innovations in batting he turned the single-stringed instrument into the many-chorded lyre. He bestrode the game like a colossus – when a Gloucestershire man was given out against Surrey, he rose on the pavilion and boomed to the umpire Shan’t have it; can’t have it; and I won’t have it!

Grace was already 47 when he scored 1,000 runs in May, 1895, which was celebrated with a magnum of champagne at Lord’s mid-wicket – as Cardus concludes, He is no legend – he is the game’s presiding spirit..

As time went on and I started to generate my own income (paper round) I began to specialise, my then part-time occupation allowing me discounted (not necessarily of the five-finger kind) access to Shoot, The Cricketer and Athletics Weekly, which coincided with the end of my dad's subscription to World Sports. What I wasn't aware of at that time was that World Sports had already been available for quite some time, so it was with great delight recently that I found on eBay a number of back issues for sale.

As a result of that procurement, I would like to present in a series of articles a review of some of the great cricket pieces which this gem of a magazine offered its readers. Writers of the calibre of Denzil Batchelor, Bruce Lockhart, SC Griffith and the great man himself, Neville Cardus, delighted those of the cricketing faith who were fortunate enough to get their hands on this monthly sports review. There were many other items of interest, such as features on women's sport like "How far should women run?", plus stop-frame coaching pieces featuring Lindsey Hasset's batting and Jack Iverson's bowling, as well as a regular cartoon feature with much ancient wisdom from, among others, Fuller Pilch, William Lambert and James Lilywhite.

The oldest edition currently in my possession is from April 1948. This edition opens with a piece by Denzil Batchelor which features the great all-rounder Harold George Owen "Tuppy" Owen-Smith, whose nickname was shortened from the original "Tuppence" and who was capped for his native South Africa at both cricket and rugby. In cricket, he played in just a single five-Test series but his legend was cemented by an innings at Leeds in the third Test – described in the following year's Wisden as “distinctly the most exhilarating member of the last South Africa team to visit this country”, his 129 was enough to help South Africa progress from 172/9 to 275 all out, though this was not enough to prevent England winning by five wickets. Smith was also a useful welterweight boxer, and after his sporting days were done he became a doctor in Cape Town.

In the main cricket piece featured in this edition, Cardus (bylined as “the famous cricket writer and music critic”) was considering that year’s Olympic summer, as well as the upcoming visit of the Australian cricket team, in his piece entitled “Have we lost the fighting spirit?”. The maestro gives us an insight into his character with this opening, which could have been written by our own Martin Chandler – Once or twice, in my young, hot-blooded days, I have hated Yorkshiremen when they have been beating Lancashire, but on the whole, the result of a match seldom remains in my memory…. Not that he takes to sport in a lukewarm or neutral fashion, as he goes on to explain – even an exciting finish appeals to me dramatically – for its own sake, for the stimulation to nerve and imagination that an exciting finish gives us, apart from the question of who wins and who loses Truly a lover of cricket for its own sake, though he goes on to caution I want my cricket hot with Yorkshire relish…I want all the rigour of the game, with no laggards and no bowing-or-scraping, or a cheery ‘Well tried” to some fool who has missed a tolerably easy chance-at very deep long on. As Yorkshire’s Roy Kilner opined What’s use of oompires in Yorksheer and Lankysheer match? They never ‘ears owt. What we want in Yorksheer and Lankysheer matches is no oompires-and fair cheatin’ all round. Indeed.

Cardus notes the way the Grand Old Man played the game – WG Grace played cricket the right way, the only way. He, most wonderful of record breakers, never set himself to break records, they came only in his stride, so to say, in the stride of his enjoyment. In all the walks of the world, the best way to find ourselves is to lose ourselves Cardus notes that, when Lancashire would travel to Surrey, Ted Macdonald would act as if “Hobbs is mine”, but he would not bowl at the modest fry who came in late. Was this behaviour disdainful and selfish? Nobody desires an individualism in sport that runs to self-exploitation. But from some point of ethics above the ordinary plane I see a certain grandeur in Macdonald’s abnegation, his surrender of his own destructive power in the presence of the weak, the anonymous, the not-worth-getting-out. In Cardus’ opinion, a statue should be erected to Macdonald outside the Parliament House in Canberra, symbolising Australia in all her animal health

Discussing the previous summer and its restoring to health of both cricket and a war-weary nation, Cardus notes Cricket has indeed been unctuous about its powers towards “moral improvement”. We want no more of that. In this Olympic year, and having seen in the previous year the cricket crowds being restored to health by the feats of Compton and others, Cardus appealed to nothing more romantic than man’s love of losing himself in enjoyment-thereby finding himself and the one and true god of sport.

The following month’s edition, May 1948, includes a colour plate featuring a painting of 1947 Sportsman of the Year Denis Compton, though with no indication of the identity of the artist (see above). There is also a fine representation of Ray Lindwall’s action in stop-frame sequence. The main cricket piece is once again penned by Neville Cardus, as he previewed the visit of what would come to be known as Bradman’s Invincibles – After ten years we are about to see Australian cricketers again in England, and for a while we’ll be able to watch a real Test match, every ball a nail in someone’s coffin. Already our pessimists, hereditary lords of compliant and woe and dyspepsia, are lengthening their fine faces in dire presage of England’s defeat. As Cardus noted There is certainly something to be said for the point of view that England will not beat Australia this year until they have got Bradman out tem times. Though England did manage to dismiss him seven times, Bradman averaged “only” 72.57 though, in what was his last series, he was only outscored by Arthur Morris. Indeed, the scene for the series was set in the first Test, when England found herself behind by a massive 344 runs on first innings.

But before this all played out, Cardus was wishing for a wet summer – Bradman has yet to show us sustained mastery on a sticky pitch against a fast bowler, going on to explain how the exploiters of stickies had shifted to the faster end of the bowling spectrum. However, Cardus still feared Bradman was as near to the ball as the sheath to the encased sword…To get him out ten times will come close to the general beggary of wit, invention and resource. He bemoaned the bowling on both sides as mediocre – There is no O’Reilly, no Grimmett…none of them-neither Lindwall, nor Miller, nor Toshack, nor Ring, nor McCool-are in possession of tricks and devices not familiar to any cricketer pretending towards first-class. However, despite the great man’s prognostications, as Wisden noted in 1949, Lindwall’s bowling proved the biggest sngle weapon on either side.

Cardus opined that Compton would be England’s hero, and indeed Compton’s 184 in the first Test seemed to bear that out, and he would go on to average more than 60 in the Tests. However Cardus saw the skipper, Hutton, as England’s mainstay with the bat – our nearest to the Jack Hobbs model.. The great writer also foresaw Doug Wright as possibly England’s trump card, however as it turned out lumbago forced the spinner’s withdrawal from the first Test and an uninspiring 2/123 in the second meant he was not called upon again.

Cardus concluded In any case, there is no room in the present age, with its shadows and uncertainties, for dull, unentertaining sport. Dreary cricket will today be regarded as a waste of time, manpower, money and temper.

Hopefully, despite England’s defeat and the inaccuracies of some of his predictions, the great man was able to lose himself in his enjoyment of cricket, rather than the result.