Australian cricket team in Australia in 1950-51

The 1950-51 Australians defeated the touring England team 4-1 in the 1950-51 Ashes series, Australia's last Ashes success until 1958-59. The series was tilted the balance from the powerful Australian teams of the 1940s to the strong England teams of the 1950s. While in the end they won easily the team made heavy weather of defeating a weak touring team and would lose the next three hard-fought Ashes series. The newly knighted Sir Donald Bradman had retired from cricket, but most of his great 1948 Australian team still played and Australia had not lost a Test series since 1932-33.

At the fifteenth attempt since the war we won at Melbourne...It was then that I felt that the great Australian team was just beginning to deteriorate. The quality of the Test sides usually runs in cycles. A number of the batsmen who scored heavily on previous occasions found that Don Bradman had not spent hours at the wicket softening the bowling, and run-scoring against bowlers who were not tired was not so easy.

When they were defeated in the Fifth Test it ended their unbeaten run of 14 Tests against England, 26 Tests against all countries and 96 games in all cricket, having lost their last game to England at the Oval in 1938. Their record remained until England played 27 Tests without defeat in 1968-71.

Hassett played to win, to the last inch and the last second. If he could not do that, he set out to prevent the other fellows from winning. Yet, if defeat was inevitable, he could take it as well as anybody.

Lindsay Hassett had been Don Bradman's vice-captain in 1948, but his rise to the captaincy was not certain despite his seniority and talent. Australian cricket swung around the twin poles of Victoria and New South Wales who dominated the Sheffield Shield. Hassett was captain of Victoria and his rival Arthur Morris was captain of New South Wales, with some board members being biased against Hassett's Irish Catholic background, he only received the post by the barest of margins (7-6). Hassett was 37 by the 1950-51 season and Morris was tipped to lead the 1953 tour of England, but remained vice-captain to Hassett and his Victorian successor Ian Johnson and only led Australia in two Tests in their absence (which he both lost). Hassett himself was a dimulative (5'6") batsman who had been a great strokemaker before the war and had made his Test debut in England in 1938. He performed well for the Australian Services cricket team and in the Victory Tests against England in 1945. After the war he took his batting more seriously and was more defensive, though never dull, and he never failed in a series. He had an impish good humour, but as captain tended to become serious on the field. Although a keen tactician he lacked the aggressiveness and self-confidence of Bradman, but then he also lacked Bradman's batting and Hassett would see Australia overshadowed by the strong England teams of the mid-1950s.

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