Sporting Bygones: How the one and only Bradman master-minded Australia's great Ashes comeback

One-nil down with three Tests to play, they face an uphill task to win the Ashes.

Only once in Ashes history have Australia recovered from a worse predicament to claim the urn – Bradman inspiring a comeback from 2-0 down to win the 1936-37 series 3-2.

With Andrew Strauss's England requiring only one more win to retain the Ashes, it will take a Bradmanesque performance to stop their charge.

One can only imagine the feelings of England captain Gubby Allen and his players when they lost their 2-0 lead in Australia 74 years ago.

The tourists played some sparkling cricket during the first two Tests to forge a seemingly impregnable advantage.

In the first game at Brisbane, they ran out victors by 322 runs.

After Allen won the toss, Yorkshire's Maurice Leyland top-scored with 126 out of England's first innings total of 358.

Australia replied with 234, Jack Fingleton leading the way with exactly 100 before being bowled by the Yorkshire left-arm spinner Hedley Verity, England following up with 256.

Chasing 381, the home team were routed for 58, Bradman registering a second-ball duck as Allen returned 5-36.

England's triumph in the second match at Sydney was no less convincing.

Once again they batted first and Wally Hammond showed all his class with an undefeated 231 out of a first innings total of 426.

In reply, Australia were shot out for 80 (Bradman a golden duck) and for 324 following-on.

The series appeared as good as over.

But hold your horses...

After scoring 200-9 declared in the first innings of the third Test in Melbourne, Australia dismissed England for 76, Morris Sievers leading the way with 5-21.

Then Bradman – suffering from a severe chill and batting at No.7 – scored 270, his highest innings against England in Australia.

The Don added 346 for the sixth-wicket with Fingleton as Australia piled up 564, leaving England a notional 689 for victory.

Despite the best efforts of Leyland, who contributed an unbeaten 111, the visitors were bowled out for 323.

Bradman made another double hundred during the fourth Test at Adelaide to help Australia to a 148-run victory that levelled the series.

He scored 212 out of a second innings score of 433 after Australia gained a first innings lead of 42.

In reply, England were bowled out for 243 as Chuck Fleetwood-Smith captured 6-110.

The stage was all set for the final Test in Melbourne, where Bradman's golden run continued apace.

The master batsman top-scored with 169 out of Australia's first innings 604, which also featured centuries by Jack Badcock and Stan McCabe.

England managed only 239 in response and, following-on, 165 as the home team won by an innings and 200 runs.

Bradman finished the series with a staggering 810 runs at an average of 90, McCabe recording the next highest aggregate with 491.

If Bradman's feats in 1936-37 were spectacular, they were nothing less than stunning during his visits to Headingley.

Indeed, the Leeds venue was his most prolific Test ground during a career that brought him 6,996 runs at an average of 99.94.

On his first visit in 1930, Bradman scored a then world record 334.

Four years later, he made the small matter of 304.

Bradman's performance during the 1934 Test inspired one of the best passages of writing by the former Yorkshire Post cricket correspondent JM Kilburn.

At the end of a second day which Bradman ended unbeaten on 271, Kilburn wrote:

"At 11 o'clock this morning a man walked from the pavilion at Headingley; a man clad in flannels and with a green cap pulled down to shade his bright eyes.

"He carried with him a beautiful white bat and the only trace of aggression about him was the spring in his step.

"Yet that bat was a terrible weapon which dealt destruction all round it, and at 6.30 this evening Don Bradman ran for shelter, closely guarded by policemen; the long day's battle was over and he stood undefeated, the champion of champions."

Kilburn went on: "Look at him from any viewpoint you like; he has all the shots, he is a master of himself; his stamina is amazing and his thirst for pure runs seems unquenchable. He is a textbook of batting come to life with never a mis-print or erratum."

Thereafter it was "downhill" all the way for Bradman at Headingley.

In the 1938 Test he managed only 103 and 16 and, on his last visit to England in 1948, scored 33 and 173 not out.

That latter innings inspired a then world record run-chase of 404-3 as he shared a stand of 301 with Arthur Morris.

It left Bradman with the extraordinary record of 963 Test runs at Leeds at 192.60.

But of all his historic feats, few matched the way he mastermined Australia's revival in 1936-37 – a recovery of which the current side can only dream.