FOUR-NIL winners, the Invincibles of 1948 were thwarted as whitewashers only by Manchester’s rain. Like Ponting’s 2007 vintage, Don Bradman’s last Australia team was totally dominant. In Australia their aura has grown almost to beatification.

The previous summer had been especially sunny in England. Crowds were vast, the South Africans were beaten 3-0 and Denis Compton and Bill Edrich broke batting records, Compton with 18 centuries, both with record aggregates (3,816 and 3,539 runs, unbelievable figures today). So, as last autumn, the optimists assumed that England would provide stern opposition against Australia in 1948. They did not. Only at Leeds did England have a sniff, but the baggy greens chased down 404 in a record-breaking innings, while Jim Laker, who was to be their scourge eight years later, toiled and failed, with catches dropped and even a stumping miss by the normally immaculate jack-in-the-box, Godfrey Evans.

Overall, the Australians hit eight centuries to England’s four, Bradman and Compton two each. The Australian left-handers took the eye. Arthur Morris, so purposeful as an opener, hit three hundreds, and Neil Harvey got his in that historic Headingley match.

However, the issue was settled by bowlers. The Australians knew their business and were by the end irresistible. Keith Miller and Ray Lindwall are in the Hall of Fame, alongside Ted McDonald and Jack Gregory from the 1920s and Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson of the 1970s. They arrived festooned with scalps from England’s 1946-47 tour, and their speed, accuracy and bounce were as alarming as Harold Larwood and Bill Voce had been for England during Bodyline 16 years earlier. No helmets, remember. Compton, for one, came off at Trent Bridge, apparently bleeding to death after a missed hook. Afterwards, he drank away his headache with his assailants, having hit 184.

Australia had no Shane Warne, in fact no spinner of standing. Bruce Dooland, who was to prove himself an excellent leg-spinner, had fallen out with Bradman, a death sentence, and was not picked.

With a new ball — in those days absurdly available every 55 overs — so rapidly reinforcing their strength, all Australia needed was infill, bowlers who could tie down England while the opening barrage was rested. In fact, Bill Johnston was a superb talent capable of bowling anything left-handed, quick or slow. Then there was another left-hander, Ernie Toshack, to attack the leg stump. No liberties could be taken there either.

Against them, England pitted that huge-hearted boxer of bowlers, Alec Bedser, and a thin supporting cast. Disparaged recently as a “dobber” by a television pundit, Bedser hit the deck hard and fancied himself against Morris and Bradman with the new ball.

The ultimate disgrace came at The Oval. A ragbag of the beaten and the never-good-enoughs were bowled out for 52.

Throughout that innings I was fielding at long leg at Oakham school. In front, our bald-headed opening bowler wheeled away; behind, a gardener weeded vegetables. We listened to events almost as dire as the dark days of 1940. A couple of weeks later, with my appetite already whetted by two schoolboy appearances at Lord’s, I caught the bus outside the family farm at Mayfield in East Sussex, changed at Heathfield for the slow old Southdown to Hastings, and joined the horde heading to watch these giants play against the South of England.

Thousands sat on the grass. Bradman, bowled for a duck in his last Test innings by a rather obvious Eric Hollies googly, presumably misty-eyed, was suddenly hungry again. His pulling was astonishing, daring and decisive: another hundred! England had to wait five long years before Len Hutton reclaimed the Ashes.