As Australia took the field after lunch at the SCG on 9 January 1951, the applause was appreciative but earnest. The crowd swelling past 30,000 had so far spent the day in light-hearted enjoyment of the Australian tail’s last twitchings, and in genuine sympathy for the travails of a popular touring team reduced by injury to only three bowlers. Now there was the feeling that the Ashes might be decided that day. England trailed by 136 on the first innings, and Bill Watt’s pitch was now into its fourth day.
The Australians fanned out to encircle Len Hutton and Cyril Washbrook, a new ball nestling in Ray Lindwall’s grip at the Paddington end, the field an intimidating formation of expert cricketers. Keith Miller and Ian Johnson, already responsible for a stand of 150 runs and seven wickets between them, lounged at slip. Harvey, Sam Loxton and Ken Archer patrolled the in-field as keenly as kelpies. Tallon behind the stumps looked as vigilant as a policeman on a stake-out.
Yet the break did not come. Hutton and Washbrook met the thrust of Lindwall and Miller adeptly for half an hour, Hutton presenting nothing but the broadest of bats, Washbrook tucking away some riskless boundaries. And the pitch: unlike the black and basalt-hard Bulli surfaces of Bradman’s prewar heyday, the Sydney track was visibly a lighter shade, more like chocolate, the wear visible, the profits for pace reduced. Spin might today prove decisive. Bill Johnston replaced Miller at the Randwick end with a maiden, but the figure hibernating at mid on held out perhaps the greatest hope of all.
The crowd had seen Jack Iverson once that day already, briefly swinging his heavy bat, and again displaying his incompetence with it: having equalled his highest Test score of one, he’d been run out attempting a hopeless second. But the crowd’s murmur was audible at 2.45pm when Hassett passed him the ball at the Randwick end, and there was also a sense of expectation on the field. In their brief last-wicket stand before lunch, both Miller and Iverson had seen leg spinners from England’s captain Freddie Brown deviate sharply. ‘You’ll turn a yard on this,’ Miller had muttered encouragingly. ‘It’s on,’ Jack had said to himself.
As he watched Hassett marshal his formation, Jack felt a pang of disquiet about his off-side protection. Johnson at slip, Harvey in the covers, Arthur Morris at point; surely he could not curb the great Hutton and Washbrook with a three-six field. But he could. There was, as usual, no anxious loosener: Washbrook stole forward to smother a first delivery of inch-perfect length that twisted back treacherously before rolling to Johnston at short fine leg. And twice in a spotless over, good lbw appeals were rejected by umpire Andy Barlow. Jack took his cap to appreciative applause.
Miller at forward short leg could see Hutton’s left leg tensing as Jack bowled his second over, and wondered if the spinner’s control would hold. It did. Another maiden, the Yorkshireman incarcerated in his crease, his pads absorbing the ball like a pile of sandbags, but his bat needing to be held from harm. A stillness had come over the day. Even Jack knew they were coming out well; he glanced at the scoreboard, saw no runs against his name, and felt a little flush of confidence. For the third ball of his next over, he decided to throw in that funny old leg break of his, the one that never quite worked, but on this pitch just might.
How it worked, and how he would cherish that ball in years to come. Hutton, advancing, pulled up just short of the half-volley, and felt the ball kiss his outside edge. The eye could scarcely follow what ensued: Tallon deflected the snick wide, Johnson surged forward from slip to interpose a couple of fingers and arrest its flight, the keeper arched backwards and at full stretch recaptured the rebound in his right gauntlet. Hutton, bat groping for the sanctuary of the crease, watched his dismissal, transfixed. Jack, raising his arms halfway, felt suddenly ‘up in the clouds’.
Reg Simpson negotiated the maiden, and two other maidens followed before Washbrook seemed to relieve the tension by helping himself to two boundaries from Johnston. But with the sixth ball of his fifth over, Jack struck again, Simpson helping a huge wrong ‘un into Talion’s gloves down the leg side. And though singles to Washbrook and new batsman Denis Compton in his sixth over momentarily marred the purity of his analysis, there was more to come: Washbrook, groping sightlessly at a wrong ‘un, was bowled by the fifth ball of Iverson’s seventh over.
It was all down to confidence, Jack told Alan Trengove fifteen years later, ‘because when you are completely confident some sixth sense takes over and you bowl like a demon’. He was even fielding, for him, well. The ball had harried him throughout the first innings, following him round and exposing his inelasticity. On a couple of occasions now, he stopped well-struck Compton on drives, enjoying generous rounds of applause. And by the time the umpires lifted the bails for tea at 4pm, Jack’s figures read 10-5-11-3. He did his best to accept the ovation modestly, walking cap in hand and eyes front as Hassett allowed him to pass first through the gate. ‘Said you’d turn it, son,’ Miller said, playfully slapping his back.
With the injured Trevor Bailey and Doug Wright unlikely to bat, Compton and Gilbert Parkhouse represented effectively England’s last line of resistance, and every ball Jack bowled after the break contained the whiff of a wicket. Compton would normally have swept a bowler pitching Jack’s line, but the overspin on his stock ball made it simply too dangerous. His googlies struck the pads so often and so hard, in fact, that the ball had to be wiped with a rag to remove white cleaning powder. His control was so precise that Parkhouse finally ventured off on a foolish single and was thrown out by Loxton.
Having bowled unchanged for more than two hours, and conceded only 15 runs from eight overs after tea, Jack finally gave way for a breather to Johnston at 5.15pm; a typically astute piece of Hassett captaincy. Relaxing fatally, Compton stabbed to slip, and Godfrey Evans was bowled offering an over-eager swipe at Johnson. England’s determination to make the 17 runs necessary to avoid the ignominy of an innings defeat was evidenced when Bailey, broken thumb in a cast, joined his skipper Brown. But Hassett whistled up Jack from his twenty-minute furlough to complete the work he’d begun, and the bowler did so in a dozen deliveries. Brown played all round a top spinner. Bedser shouldered arms to a wrong ‘un pitching wide of off stump and had his leg stump disturbed-his leg stump, would you believe it? Last man John Warr swung dejectedly at his first delivery and immediately joined in the ritual scramble for souvenirs. The electric thrill was so great that Jack sang out to Miller at slip: ‘I wouldn’t mind a piece of that!’ Miller smiled: ‘You’ll get it, son.’ And as they neared the gate, the great all-rounder popped the ball in Jack’s pocket with words the spinner would always remember: ‘Here, you deserve this.’ Local association secretary Syd Smith would arrange for its mounting in an engraved silver hoop reading: ‘Presented to J. B. Iverson by the New South Wales Cricket Association to commemorate his feat in obtaining six wickets for 27 runs during the Third Test Australia v England 5 to 9 January 1951 Commonwealth Jubilee Year.’
It was 5.51pm, just over three hours since Jack Iverson had released his first ball, and now he had won a Test match for Australia ensuring the retention of the Ashes. He had, Jack Fingleton said in the Sydney Sun, ‘bowled as well on this day as I have seen an Australian spinner bowl’. His performance would, Percy Beames told readers of the Age, ‘completely dispel the last lingering doubts on his greatness’. He might prove, Percy Millard commented in Melbourne’s Herald, ‘Australia’s greatest match-winner since Bradman.’ Even the sceptical Cardus was humming a hymn of praise in the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘I gladly eat the words of doubt I expressed the other day about his essential quality. A man is a fool, and loses not gains, if he cannot change his mind when new evidence is put before him.’
Yet perhaps the strangest event of the day was still to come. For when journalists flocked to Jack for a few quotes to line their columns for the next day, he told them he intended to retire. ‘I have been wondering about whether I should continue,’ Jack said, ‘and even after today’s enjoyment I might decide to give up the game right away.’
Jack had provided many unusual spectacles in his brief career, but his equivocations after the Sydney Test were among the most intriguing. Just as he had rushed off to see his father first on the day of his Test selection, so did he think of his father first on the day of his greatest triumph.
Jack explained to reporters that Harry had been ill with rheumatoid arthritis—in fact, both Harry and Ede were sufferers—and that he might need to make a greater commitment to H. W. Iverson. ‘I love my cricket and I don’t want to give it up yet,’ he told Tom Goodman of the Sydney Morning Herald. ‘But I cannot make any decision until Friday night when I’ll have a long talk with my father in Melbourne.’
It cannot be determined today if there was any understanding between Jack and his father about his future, although Jack’s ready reference to his filial duties so soon after his crowning achievement suggests that they must have been a prior topic of conversation. And Harry’s own statements to the press—for he was sought out for comment—carry a similar implication. When an unnamed journalist from the Sun called on The Esplanade on the evening of 9 January, Harry said that he was happy for his son to continue playing, but only for the time being:
Jack’s only thinking of me when he talks of retiring. I’m confident that he’ll see the season through. Jack knows I’m getting on in years and he knows the state of our business. Tonight, I feel on top of the world. I can hold things together until the end of the cricket season...I’m not going to stand in his way.
This qualified endorsement had, by the time Alf Brown of the Herald visited H. W Iverson the next day, turned into something rather more stern:
I intend to take it easy from now on. He won’t have time for the big stuff, although he might be able to continue with district cricket. Jack has his responsibilities and if he sticks to big cricket in spite of them, he would be very foolish.
One shouldn’t wonder that Harry was keen to step back from his business. He was to turn sixty-six in a week, and it was fully twelve years since Jack had returned from Landscape to become a sub-agent with H. W. Iverson, only to be claimed first by the war and then by sport. And, for her part, Jack’s daughter Sherry believes that her father was under pressure to give the game away:
I think my grandfather was proud of what Dad did, but I think he was saying: ‘You’ve had five years of cricket. It’s about time to settle down and make a living.’ Had Dad had one or two brothers, things might have been different, but he didn’t, and it wasn’t, and that was the way it was.
Jack’s dilemma of cricket versus career, however, was not an uncommon one in his time. For most, the game remained an amateur pursuit. The 1950-51 domestic Test match fee was a relatively attractive £60—six times average weekly earnings—but a Sheffield Shield player could expect only about £6 a match and his professional advancement to suffer as a result of the time cricket consumed.
So why did Jack consider his own situation unsustainable? Lindsay Hassett, for instance, had set up his own Melbourne sports store in February 1949, then had to leave it for six months to tour South Africa, but was still playing avidly at an age two years Jack’s senior. At the other end of seniority, Jack Moroney, two years Jack’s junior, was supporting a wife and four children on a teacher’s salary. Jack’s post-Sydney prevarications seem understandable only in two contexts: an acute sense of honour and obligation to his father, whose sacrifices in his interest he seems to have been uncommonly aware of, and an attachment to cricket rather looser than that of his peers. Jack had pursued his sporting goals too devotedly to be classified a weak man, but his public equivocations smack of a rather deferential one. They are certainly at odds with someone whose self-perception was as ‘a bit of a rebel’.
In the end, Jack did play on, informing Victorian selector Jack Ryder on the morning of 13 January that he would be available for the rest of the summer, but that thereafter he would be available only for district cricket. It was ten days before the selectors were due to reconvene, and widespread relief prevailed, for this most unlikely figure was now as big a star as any in the game.