page_title: Doug Ring
section_title: Test debut
hierarchical_section_title: Doug Ring / Post-war career / Test debut
caption_attribution_description: Australian cricketer Douglas Thomas Ring (1918 - 2003) is congratulated by his colleagues at the Melbourne Department of Commerce, after being picked to tour England with the Australian cricket team, 25th February 1948.
context_page_description: Douglas Thomas Ring was an Australian cricketer who played for Victoria and for Australia in 13 Test matches between 1948 and 1953. In 129 first-class cricket matches, he took 426 wickets bowling leg spin, and he had a top score of 145 runs, which was the only century of his career.
  Ring made his Test debut against India in the 1947–48 season and was picked for Australia's tour of England in 1948, the so-called "Invincibles" side, but played in only one Test match on the tour. He had greater success against West Indies in 1951–52, and South Africa the following season and made a second less successful tour of England in 1953. Following cricket, Ring held positions in industry administration in Victoria, and became a cricket radio commentator and later host of Australia's World of Sport.
context_section_description: It was a good time to make an eye-catching performance: the next match at the MCG was the fifth and final Test against India and Ring was selected, replacing Colin McCool, who had taken only four wickets in three matches of the five-Test series, and making his Test debut. After Australia made 575 for eight declared, with Ring making 11 when batting at No 10, Ring bowled 36 eight-ball overs, taking three for 103 as India reached 331, and then took three further wickets for just 17 in a second-innings capitulation for just 67. With match figures of six for 120 in his first game, Ring was picked for the 1948 tour of England, the tour led by Donald Bradman that became known, through its unbeaten record, as "The Invincibles".
  Though the 1948 tour of England was a triumph for the Australians, Ring was not prominent in the success. The faster bowlers, headed by Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller, dominated the bowling attack, and with a new ball allowed after just 55 overs of play, spin bowlers made little impact in the big matches. Ring, said Wisden in its summary of the tour, "was never a trump card in the pack". Such was the strength of the Australian bowling that Ring's 60 first-class wickets at an average of 21.81 on the tour was the highest bowling average of the regular bowlers. The strength of the batting side also meant that he batted only 14 times in his 19 first-class matches on the tour, and he passed 50 only once. He played in one Test match—the last of the five-match series, at The Oval. He did not bowl in the first innings as England were dismissed for just 52, and took one wicket—that of Allan Watkins—in 28 economical overs in the second innings as Bradman's final Test ended in an innings victory.
  Ring and fellow fringe members of the squad, Ron Hamence and Colin McCool, would refer themselves as the "ground-staff" as it was unlikely that the tour selectors would include them in the Test team on the 1948 tour.
  Over the next three Australian seasons, Ring played regularly for Victoria and appeared also in some lesser representative matches. He figured in both the Donald Bradman Testimonial Match and the Alan Kippax-Bert Oldfield Testimonial, which were the big set-piece matches of the 1948–49 season, the latter being used as a "Test trial" for the 1949–50 tour of South Africa, for which Ring was not picked. Instead, in early 1950 he went on a non-Test playing tour of New Zealand where, in the three-day match between New Zealand and the touring side, he took seven for 88 in the home side's first innings, which remained the best figures of his first-class career. By the 1950–51 season, when Ring had one of his worst batting but better bowling seasons for Victoria, he had been overtaken in the Test match pecking order by his Victoria team-mate, Jack Iverson, whose quirky all-sorts of spin bowling was used in all five Tests.
caption: Doug Ring is congratulated by his colleagues at the Melbourne Department of Commerce on 25 February 1948 after being selected to tour England.
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