The first tied Test: Brisbane, December 1960
Eighty-three years and nearly 500 Tests had never produced a tie. Then Frank Worrell's West Indies and Richie Benaud's Australia played five days of attacking cricket at the Gabba and finished with the scores level and three run-outs in the final hour.
A series that needed saving
Test cricket arrived in Brisbane in December 1960 in need of a lift. The late 1950s had been a grey time for the game, with slow scoring, defensive fields and a steady diet of draws, and crowds had begun to drift away. The two captains who walked out at the Gabba on 9 December were determined to change that. Richie Benaud, the Australian leg-spinner, was an attacking captain by instinct. Frank Worrell was leading West Indies in a full series for the first time, the first black cricketer appointed to the job, and he had told his players that they would play to win and play to entertain.
Nobody at the ground could have known they were about to watch something that had not happened in 83 years and several hundred Test matches: a tie. It would take five days, 1,474 runs, 40 wickets and a final over that people who were there still describe ball by ball.
Sobers sets the tone
Worrell won the toss and batted, and for a while it looked like a mistake. Against Alan Davidson, Australia's left-arm fast bowler, West Indies lost three wickets for 65 before Garry Sobers joined Worrell. What followed was one of the great innings of the era. Sobers made 132, driving and cutting with a freedom that set the tone for the whole match, and he and his captain added 174 for the fourth wicket before Sobers was caught at 239.
Worrell made 65, Joe Solomon 65 before treading on his stumps, and the wicketkeeper Gerry Alexander a fluent 60. Even the fast bowler Wes Hall joined in, hitting 50 before he was stumped. West Indies were all out for 453. Davidson took 5 for 135 from 30 eight-ball overs, the eight-ball over then being the rule in Australia.
O'Neill and the reply
Australia replied in kind. Colin McDonald and Bob Simpson put on 84 for the first wicket, Simpson went on to 92, and Norm O'Neill, the young New South Wales batter who had been hailed as the next Bradman, played the innings of his career. He made 181, the highest score of the match, and was the last man out as Australia reached 505, a first-innings lead of 52.
It was a lead, but a small one on a pitch that was still good for batting, and West Indies set about wiping it out. Rohan Kanhai made 54 and Worrell 65 again, his second 65 of the match. Davidson, though, was irresistible. He took 6 for 87 to finish with 11 wickets in the match, and West Indies were bowled out for 284. Australia needed 233 to win.
Davidson's match
By then the match already belonged to Alan Davidson. His 11 for 222 would have been enough on its own to make it his Test, and he had also made 44 in the first innings. What he did next made it one of the great all-round performances in the history of the game: no player before him had scored 100 runs and taken 10 wickets in the same Test.
He needed to, because Wes Hall was bowling as fast as anyone in the world. Simpson and Neil Harvey were both caught with only 7 on the board, and when O'Neill and McDonald fell with the score on 49, and Les Favell soon after, Australia were 57 for 5. Ken Mackay made 28 before he was bowled, and at 92 for 6 the question was no longer whether Australia could win but whether they could survive.
The last hour
Benaud chose to attack. He and Davidson batted with the sort of positive running that the series would become famous for, and the seventh-wicket partnership grew past 50, then past 100. Worrell rotated his bowlers and kept his fielders close, and the target came down steadily. The pair added 134, and with Australia on 226 and only seven runs needed, victory looked certain.
Then Davidson, on 80, called for a quick single and was run out by a direct hit from Joe Solomon. It was the first of three run-outs that would decide the match, and it changed everything. Australia still needed six runs with three wickets left when Wes Hall began the final eight-ball over of the match.
The final over
What happened in those eight balls has been told so often that every version is slightly different, but the scorecard fixes its shape. Benaud, on 52, tried to hook Hall and was caught behind by Alexander. Australia were 228 for 8. Ian Meckiff and Wally Grout scrambled singles and a bye, and Grout skied a catch that Hall, charging in from his follow through, dropped. With the scores almost level, Meckiff hit the ball towards the leg-side boundary, and the batters ran two and turned for the winning third. Conrad Hunte's throw from the deep beat Grout, and the score stood at 232 for 9, level with West Indies.
Lindsay Kline, the last man, came in with two balls left and one run needed. He pushed his first ball into the leg side and set off. Solomon, fielding at square leg, picked up and threw down the stumps at the bowler's end with only one stump to aim at, and Meckiff was run out. Australia were all out for 232, and the match was tied. The scorecard shows three run-outs in Australia's second innings, Davidson, Grout and Meckiff, and Hall's 5 for 63. For a few moments, many of the players did not realise what the result was.
What the tie changed
The tie turned the series. Australia won it 2-1, but the cricket was played in the same spirit throughout, and it drew huge crowds. When the West Indians left for home the following February, hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of Melbourne to see them off. The trophy that Australia and West Indies still play for, the Frank Worrell Trophy, was created for that series.
Ties remain the rarest result in Test cricket. The second did not come until Madras in 1986, when Australia and India finished level, and in the CricArcade archive of 2,537 Tests to March 2024 those two are the only ones. The full Brisbane scorecard, with every fall of wicket and partnership, is on this page, and you can see how the two sides were built on the West Indies and Australia team pages. In The Follow-On you can pick either XI and see whether you can finish the job that Benaud and Davidson almost did.
Sources
- CricArcade Test archive: the full scorecard, fall of wickets and partnerships on this page
- ESPNcricinfo: West Indies in Australia 1960/61, first Test scorecard and report
- Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1962: the tour of Australia