The Victory Tests: England V Australia 1945

One minute before 7pm on Tuesday, May 22, 1945 a packed Lord's roared as Australia beat England in the last over of the first Victory Test. A fortnight after Victory in Europe, the result did not matter - only the cricket. The five matches between a near full-strength England and Australian servicemen, at least one of whom had just been released from a PoW camp, drew huge crowds. Great cricketers played on both sides: Len Hutton, Wally Hammond, Keith Miller, Lindsay Hassett. Everyone hailed the spirit of sportsmanship. Even the result - a 2-2 draw - was satisfying. Yet this story is forgotten today. The only history of the series is a limited-edition Australian book on the subject. The story has characters - besides the stars, men such as the Australian Dambusters Squadron pilot Ross Stanford; the quiet un-Australian Australian spin bowler Reg Ellis; and the English teenagers Donald Carr and John Dewes, who were on the wrong end of Keith Miller discovering that he was the fastest bowler in the world. By using the available sources to the full - newspapers of the time, memoirs, deposited records in England and Australia, recollections of surviving players The Victory Tests details what made the dressing rooms tick - in England's case, the class system of amateurs and professionals; and the tensions inside the Australian team too. Two controversies not aired before but covered in The Victory Tests are the war records of the charismatic Keith Miller - not the war hero his admirers have assumed; and of Sir Donald Bradman, absent in 1945 - and accused of being a war-dodger. Besides the see-sawing games - the largely unknown Australians playing beyond themselves - it's a story of players and sports lovers alike emerging joyously after years of war. Cricket mirrored wider society - people hoped for brighter cricket, just as they hoped for a better post-war world. Their hopes, inevitably, were disappointed. The Australians, wearied by a colourful tour of India, did poorly in matches on their return home and largely returned to obscurity. Even the bomber men's war efforts were later derided. And yet while the Victory Tests were not officially for the Ashes, they offer a refreshing change from the commercial and cynical cricket of the 21st century. The 1945 series brought sporting competition with goodwill - something more than the Ashes.

About the Author :
Since he gained a first-class degree in history at the University of Bristol in 1989, Mark Rowe has worked as a journalist. He is the author of Don't Panic: Britain Prepares for Invasion 1940 (2010). His ambition is to be a leg-spinner.

Review :
All in all this is an absorbing book and a valuable contribution to the game's literature which I have no hesitation in recommending to anyone with an interest in the era. -- Martin Chandler ... sense of cricket continuing, of life returning from the ashes of war, is a theme of the book, although the author is careful not to overplay it... Rowe is no starry-eyed romantic. He views everything with the unsentimental and iconoclastic eye of the historian and is not afraid to challenge received wisdom. -- Richard Lawrence The impressive SportsBooks imprint makes a truly triumphant debut with Marl Rowe's The Victory tests, non-stop insights and revelations on the epic 1945 'Ashes' series which lit up the peace, and a must for oldie cricket nuts of a certain generation. -- Frank Keating The Oldie ...a vivid and passionate account of that extraordinary summer. Combining breathless accounts of the matches with wide ruminations on the game as it was then, Rowe has produced a fascinating book of a golden summer that rivals any of the great Ashes contests. -- James Holland