Honorary curator David Robertson continues his look back at Kent v Australia fixtures through the years and the latest instalment covers both the greatest controversy and greatest batsman of all time.

1930

And then came Bradman. It was yet another wet and miserable summer but the Australians enjoyed a successful tour, losing only one game in their thirty-one first-class fixtures, the first Test Match at Trent Bridge.

Led by Victorian schoolmaster Bill Woodfull, there were eleven newcomers in the side but it was Bradman’s amazing batting performances that took the cricket world by storm.

He played in twenty-nine matches, scored 3,170 runs and topped the averages with 99.06. His score of 334 in the Headingley Test created a new record for the highest individual score in Test cricket.

He celebrated his twenty-second birthday on 27 August at Canterbury in front of a first-day crowd estimated at 13,000.

Nine of the Australian side had played in at least one of the Tests during the tour. Kent were enjoying another successful season, winning twelve of their twenty-eight games and finishing fifth in a closely fought Championship season.

With the exception of Gloucestershire they won more games than any of their rivals.

Four batsmen, Woolley, Ashdown, Hardinge and Leslie Ames all scored well over 1,000 runs. Woolley topped the averages with 1,823 runs at 50.63. Again the bowling star was Freeman, who easily headed the averages with 249 Championship wickets at 15.46.

Despite the generally wet summer the game commenced in hot conditions which prevailed throughout the three days. Australia won the toss and batted first but without much conviction especially against Freeman.

By lunch they had lost four wickets, Freeman being the destroyer with the dismissals of Ponsford, Bradman, who was the first of two early lbw dismissals and Jackson.

By mid-afternoon they had lost eight wickets in scoring 125 runs but a ninth wicket stand of 53 by Alex Hurwood and fast bowler Tom Wall helped them to a somewhat more respectable total of 181. Their joint top scorers were Victor Richardson and medium pace bowler Hurwood with 45 runs apiece. Freeman bowled 39.2 of the 85.2 overs in the innings and finished with 5-78.

Kent had a few minutes short of two hours batting and, when they had reached 71 before the first wicket fell, hopes of a substantial first innings lead must have been high.

The first wicket partnership had lasted eighty minutes but in the remaining time before stumps a further three batsmen followed Hardinge back to the pavilion, leaving Kent somewhat on the back foot at 87-4.

On the second day Ashdown and Leslie Todd, who finished unbeaten on 42, raised Kent’s hopes with a stand of 69. But there was then a further collapse with Ashdown, Chapman and Charles Knott falling for the addition of eleven runs. But some adventurous hitting by Gerald Legge and Charlie Wright with Todd giving support, enabled the hosts to earn a useful lead of 46.

There was an early alarm for the Tourists when Ponsford was bowled by Ashdown for eleven with the arrears not cleared. However, joined by Bradman, he and Woodfull took them beyond Kent’s total at 55-1 at tea.

But they were still not out of the wood, losing two further wickets before the close with Freeman dismissing Woodfull for 45 and night-watchman Hurwood being run out without scoring. Ominously for Kent, Bradman was still there on 68.

On the final day, after a shaky start against Freeman and with only 29 runs in the first hour, Archie Jackson and Bradman slowly took control.

Bradman’s century came in a little under two hours and with the Australians on 215 at lunch the crisis had passed. In the afternoon Jackson took a back seat whilst Bradman entertained the crowd with attacking batting.

His undefeated 205 out of a total 320-3 declared was his fifth score of the tour in excess of 200.

A belated declaration by Woodfull left Kent just one and a quarter hours to score 274. A challenge they did not accept although Frank Woolley’s undefeated sixty out of eighty-two posed the question as to what might have been had an earlier challenge been invited.

1934

Over the years a number of these contests have been badly affected by the weather and probably none more so than that of 1934.

That was a pity, as generally the tourists had enjoyed good weather after miserable conditions early on.

A dark cloud already hung over the series but fears the Australians may have had of an unfriendly welcome following the events of the Bodyline tour the previous year, proved groundless. Indeed, throughout the country the welcome they received was warm and friendly.

It had been assumed that England’s dominance from the 1932/33 tour Down Under would again prevail, but that proved not to be so. By the time the tourists arrived at Canterbury for their final game against the counties they had regained the Ashes by a margin of two games to one, their victory at the Oval in the final Test deciding the series.

Such was the impact of the tourists that three were named by Wisden in their Five Cricketers of the Year in the 1935 Almanack. Leslie Ames played in all five Tests and Frank Woolley, at the age of forty-seven in only one.

Of the game itself there is not a great deal to record. Less than one hour was possible on the first day. After Bradman, the tourists vice-captain, had won the toss and inserted the hosts, Kent, led by Percy Chapman, scored just 21 runs for the loss of two wickets at lunch with Ashdown and Woolley being the victims of O’Reilly and Fleetwood-Smith on a wicket affected by heavy overnight rain.

There was a violent hailstorm during lunch forcing abandonment of play for the day in mid-afternoon. More torrential overnight rain prevented any morning play on the second day and a further heavy storm in early afternoon led to the not unexpected announcement of the abandonment of play for the day, much to the disappointment of the estimated 2,000 spectators.

Play started an hour late on the final day with Chapman immediately declaring the Kent innings closed. The Australian opening pair, McCabe and Ponsford, went about their task as if it was the opening innings of the game.

They took no chances on a wet wicket that offered little help to the home bowlers, scoring 197 in just short of sixty overs. When Woolley had McCabe lbw for 108 and with Ponsford on an undefeated 82, Bradman declared leaving Kent to score 176 to avoid an embarrassing innings defeat or to defend for around two hours.

Embarrassment there was not, but with a little more time for the bowlers, it could have been mighty close. O’Reilly’s dismissal of Ashdown was his 100th wicket of the tour.

Woolley and Todd followed quickly and all of the Kent batsmen looked helpless particularly against the leg spin of Fleetwood-Smith who took four of the seven wickets to fall. Kent scored just 74 runs in 27.3 overs. In all, under 100 overs were bowled during less than five hours of cricket.

1938

This was Bradman’s first tour as Captain and it was an outstanding one. He scored thirteen first-class hundreds and finished with averages of 108.50 in the Tests and 115.66 after 26 innings in all other first-class games.

In a total of 32 innings he scored 2863 runs. He was well supported by seven other batsmen each of whom finished the tour with averages of 35 or more and with a team of bowlers four of whom took 340 wickets between them, the unorthodox medium-pace spinner Bill O’Reilly hitting the 100 mark.

Leg break and googly bowler Francis Ward who had lived in the shadow of O’Reilly, Clarrie Grimmett and Fleetwood-Smith, had 96 wickets all of which were in three-day matches mainly against the counties.

The tourists came to Canterbury one up in the Tests and with one to play so regardless of the result they would retain the Ashes. But no-one could have foreseen the records that would be broken at the Oval a week later.

England’s score of 903-7 beat the previous record of 849 for England against West Indies in 1930. It remained the record for almost sixty years until beaten by Sri Lanka’s 952-6 against India in 1997.

And Len Hutton’s 364 stood as an individual Test record until beaten twenty years later by Gary Sobers’ undefeated 365 for the West Indies against Pakistan.

In the days of uncovered wickets, the vagaries of the weather could very quickly determine the outcome of a match. And whilst not suggesting that the result would have been different, it was certainly the case that Kent’s poor first innings total of 108 followed a weekend of rain that left them on the Monday facing the off-breaks at medium pace from Mervyn Waite and the left-arm medium fast deliveries of Edward White.

Kent struggled on that second day in reply to a solid 479 from the tourists who had scored 450-8 on Saturday and went on to add a further 29 on Monday. Although none of their batsmen got to three figures it was a solid batting performance by almost everyone with only Queenslander Bill Brown of the top five failing to reach 50.

But their score was also assisted by some poor fielding and dropped catches. By all accounts Kent’s poor first innings was due largely to some inferior batting and the disastrous run out of Frank Woolley before a run had been scored.

By contrast, their second innings was a model of sensible batting allied to fast scoring. Frank Woolley, coming to the end of a distinguished career, hit 81 majestic runs in one hour. Leslie Ames, having played in two of the four Tests, scored a sparkling 139.

Australia begin the 2015 Ashes Tour in Canterbury with a four-day match at The Spitfire Ground, St Lawrence.

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