Victory Tests
| The Victory 'Tests' | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Date | 19 May 1945 – 22 August 1945 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Location | England | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Result | five match series drawn 2-2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Teams | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 England
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 Australia
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| Captains | |||
| Wally Hammond | Lindsay Hassett | ||
| Most runs | |||
| 380 Len Hutton 369 Wally Hammond
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514 Keith Miller 417 Cec Pepper
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| Most wickets | |||
| 25 Dick Pollard 15 George Pope
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23 Reginald Ellis 20 Cec Pepper
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The Victory Tests were a series of cricket matches played in England from 19 May to 22 August 1945, between a combined Australian Services XI and an English national side. The first match began less than two weeks after the end of World War II in Europe, and the matches were embraced by the public of England as a way to get back to their way of life from before the war.
The matches are known as the "Victory Tests", but they were never given Test match status by the participating Boards of Control, because the Australian Cricket Board feared their side was not strong enough to compete with a near Test-strength England, so the games only had first class status.
In all, the teams played five three-day matches, two of which were won by each side with one drawn. 367,000 people attended the matches at Lord's (three matches), Old Trafford and Bramall Lane (one each), with the final game at Lord's attracting a then-record 93,000 people for a single three-day match.
The Australian side was an amalgam of an RAAF XI, which had already been stationed in England during the war, and another group of mostly AIF soldiers from Australia. The players were deliberately stationed with each other in England for the express purpose of forming a cricket team to tour the country, with Australian prime minister John Curtin pushing for the immediate resumption of international cricket after the war was over. The team was officially a military unit, commanded by Squadron Leader Stan Sismey, the team's wicket-keeper. Lindsay Hassett was the on-field captain.
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