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"I dearly wanted to do well..."

As I walked out to another wonderful ovation, my mind went back 18 years to Jack Hobbs' final Test on the same ground.

The scene was re-enacted. The fieldsmen gathered round, gave three cheers, wished me good luck (for after-years, of course) and the play was resumed.

I dearly wanted to do well.

It was not to be. That reception had stirred my emotions very deeply and made me anxious -- a dangerous state of mind for any batsman to be in. I played the first ball from Hollies, though not sure I saw it.

The second was a perfect length googly which deceived me. I just touched it with the inside edge of the bat and the off bail was dislodged.

So in the midst of my great jubilation at our team's success, I had a rather sad heart about my own farewell as I wended my way pavilion-wards.

In my final matches at Nottingham, Manchester and Lord's, I scored centuries, so maybe the Oval was just one of those great reminders which are continually being sent to cricketers to keep their feet, metaphorically speaking, on the ground.

Here may I quote an excerpt from a London newspaper:-

All yesterday was a day of Test drama.

When... reached the wicket to play what was generally regarded as his last innings, the opposing players paid him a magnificient tribute.

They gathered round him and at the call of their captain, took off their caps and gave him three cheers. The crowd joined in a tornado of cheering. Seldom, if ever, can any cricketer have received such an ovation.

It seemed out of keeping with the occasion that the greatest of all Test match careers should have such an ending. But the crowd cheered him all the way back to the pavilion.

It was a saddened man who walked into the pavilion.

Emotion, it was obvious, had seized him.

He dropped his glove as he went, and stooped like a man in a dream to pick it up.

The Oval spectators, disappointed as they were, cheered affectionately -- an old friend was saying goodbye.

The little wicket gate swung... passed through and disappeared forever from the Test match scene.

Maybe you are thinking that the quotation refers to my farewell innings at the Oval.

If so, you are wrong. It describes Jack Hobbs' last appearance in 1930 (my first Test at the Oval).

However, the similarity is so marked that I felt it was worth repeating. Yet so distinguished a person as Professor Walter Murdoch says that history never repeats itself.

In this instance, it was very close.

The match was already over, as England faced a hopeless task.

She fought back well, and might still have had some chance, but for another magnificient innings by Arthur Morris, who appeared rather unlucky to lose the umpire's decision in a close run-out call. This 196 was the innings of a young master who had steadily gone from strength to strength until he stood that day firmly entrenched as not only the greatest contemporary left-hand bat, but in my opinion, the greatest left-hander I have ever seen.

There is little point in describing the rest of the game. Australia again bowled and fielded splendidly, the ubiquitous Lindwall taking a catch in the gully off Compton so quickly that it must have been instinct, not eyesight. Hutton again batted for a long time, always on the defensive, but there was no hope and only a storm delayed the end.

There was a personal interest in the last three wickets.

Ray Lindwall, by taking 27 wickets in the Tests, had equalled Ted McDonald's record for one series against England.

Could he get more? He tried hard but the odd one eluded him as Bill Johnston spun out the last three men to also claim 27 wickets in the series.

Before leaving the scene, tributes to my own career were kindly spoken by H D G Leveson-Gower and Norman Yardley, to which I replied.

The Oval crowd gave generous applause to our team and to me personally as we left with the cricket supremacy of the world securely tucked away.

Excerpted from Farewell to Cricket: An Autobiography, by Don Bradman, first published 1950, courtesy Rupa Paperbacks.