Further to this post about Stuart Broad and the Decision Review System, there’s a letter from J. H. C. Leach in today’s Times (£) defending Broad’s decision not to walk:
Sir, “Non-walking” is far from new. Most famously, in the first Test at Brisbane in 1946, Don Bradman, then on 28, slashed Voce to Ikin in the slips. He did not walk, and when Hammond belatedly appealed, he was given “not out”. Bradman went on to score 187, and England, caught on a sticky wicket after a thunderstorm, were heavily defeated. It is hard to blame Broad.
I’m afraid the Times’s correspondent has the wrong end of the stick here. Walking and not-walking in this context are only relevant when a batsman knows, or at least thinks, he is out. A batsman who doesn’t think so obviously has no reason to consider walking.
I ‘remember’ this particular incident well, not because I followed the Brisbane Test at the time (I was only three), but because I’ve read about it. This is from Bradman’s account in Farewell to Cricket:
Voce bowled me a ball which was near enough to a yorker. I attempted to chop down on top of it in order to guide the ball wide of the slip fieldsmen. Instead it flew to Ikin at second slip.
In my opinion, the ball touched the bottom of my bat just before hitting the ground and therefore it was not a catch. Accordingly I stood my ground waiting for the game to proceed.
Somewhat belatedly there was an appeal. Without the slightest hesitation umpire Borwick at the bowler’s end said, “Not out.”
In ‘Testing Time’ for England Denis Compton wrote that the fielders close to the bat were stunned at the not-out decision and ‘felt that a great injustice had been done’. The journalist Bruce Harris wrote, in With England in Australia:
I must say that from my distant seat I thought the ball came “off the deck.” So apparently did the umpire. But our fieldsmen had no doubt in their minds that the catch was good. Bradman told me afterwards that if he had thought he was out he certainly would not have remained there.
It has ever been thus, but in any event the case is not pertinent to the issue of walking or not walking.
[For links to the other posts in this series, see here.]