The following season, Fingleton won praise for an unbeaten century against the bodyline attack in a tour match despite suffering multiple bruises and being accused of leaking the infamous verbal exchange between Australian captain Bill Woodfull and English manager Plum Warner during the acrimonious Ashes.

Fingleton scored four centuries and was the leading run-scorer during the 1934–35 domestic season, earning a recall to the Australian team for the 1935–36 tour of South Africa.

Fingleton enlisted in the military during World War II and was eventually sent to work on media matters for Prime Minister John Curtin and one of his predecessors, Billy Hughes.

Fingleton was known for his forthright opinions and willingness to criticise, especially regarding his colleague Don Bradman, and his cricket reports were published by newspapers in several countries.

[6] In 1913, at the age of five, Fingleton's father was elected into state parliament as a representative of the centre left, labour-union oriented Australian Labor Party, and the family moved into a larger house.

[8] In 1917, the family fell upon hard times when the elder Fingleton lost his seat and resumed his job as a tram driver, but in 1918 contracted tuberculosis.

[24][26] In 1930–31, aged 22, Fingleton regained his position at the start of the Sheffield Shield season for New South Wales, and first came to prominence when he withstood a ferocious opening spell against the express pace of Eddie Gilbert in Brisbane against Queensland.

[9] On one occasion, a particularly fast Gilbert delivery supposedly evaded both the batsman and wicket-keeper, travelled more than 60 metres and crashed through a fence before hitting and killing a dog on the other side.

Gilbert cut down the New South Wales top order with a spell of 3/12 and forced Alan Kippax to retire hurt after hitting him in the upper body.

[24] Fingleton then scored his maiden first-class century of 117 in less than four hours in the following match, against the touring South Africa, helping his team to 3/430 in their runchase.

[24] Fingleton made his debut in the Fifth and final Test in similar circumstances to his break at the start of the season; Bill Ponsford fell ill and Bradman twisted an ankle.

[9][21] As Bradman later took a hard-running catch as a substitute fielder on the same day, some suspected that he had feigned injury to avoid playing on a rain-affected wicket hostile to batting—he had appeared uncomfortable against aggressive bowling in the previous Test.

He was allowed to ease into his first innings when the first ball he faced, from Neville Quinn, was a deliberate full toss to give him an opportunity to score his initial runs easily.

[20][37] He was blamed for leaking the details of the dressing room exchange between captain Bill Woodfull and English manager Plum Warner, which almost caused the abandonment of the Test series.

[47] He scored 105 in the Test trial for Richardson's XI and then struck 145 against arch-rivals Victoria in the last match of the season; New South Wales were unable to force a victory and thus ceded the Sheffield Shield to their southern neighbours.

[55] Wisden speculated that Fingleton's omission may have been due to cricket diplomacy reasons following the incident in Adelaide,[1] while others thought that regionalism was to blame; this view posited that Ernest Bromley was selected so that seven Victorians and New South Welshmen would be on the tour.

McCabe had flayed the attack and reached 189 not out when the South Africans had the match called off, claiming that the fieldsmen were endangered by the batsman's vigorous hitting.

[24] Despite his rapid scoring in South Africa, Fingleton's achievements went largely unheralded at home; at the time, England and Australia were by far the strongest Test teams and media coverage of the tour was scant.

Gubby Allen's Englishmen toured Australia,[72] and after failing to pass 10 in his first three innings for the season, Fingleton scored 39, 42 and 56 in matches for New South Wales and an Australian XI against the tourists.

Fingleton's feats was later equalled by Alan Melville, (whose four centuries were scored on either side of World War II) and surpassed by the West Indian, Everton Weekes in 1948–49.

[77] At one point, Fingleton theatrically decided to take off his gloves, put down his bat and sit down on the pitch and refusing to resume before the gallery quietened, but this only caused a huge uproar.

[24] Fingleton then aggregated only 36 in four innings in next three county fixtures, and after the Third Test at Old Trafford never started due to persistent rain,[24][78] he was concussed in the match against Warwickshire at Edgbaston.

A long hop from Waite was pulled into his head at point-blank range, and Fingleton managed to duck enough that it glanced his forehead and went into the air, to the cries of "catch it" from Bradman.

[85] The leader of the United Australia Party, Hughes had particularly worried Prime Minister John Curtin by frequently and publicly excoriating US General Douglas MacArthur, who was commanding the Allied forces in the Pacific.

[90] Fingleton received advice and encouragement from the eminent British cricket writer Neville Cardus,[91] and suffered a setback when, after finishing half the book, he sent his manuscript to be reviewed.

[94] Fingleton expressed his views forthrightly and interspersed the account with analyses and profiles of those involved in the Bodyline series, including Bradman, Jardine, Larwood, Warner and McCabe.

[104] At the dedication ceremony, Governor-General of Australia Sir Ninian Stephen said that Fingleton was not merely a Test cricketer who became a parliamentary journalist in the national capital, but "an institution" in Canberra.

In the 1930s, Australia had been divided along sectarian lines, with those of Irish descent such as Fingleton being Catholic and Anglo-Australians such as Bradman being predominantly Protestant, leading to speculation that the tension was fuelled by religion.

During the 1936–37 Ashes series in Australia, four Catholics—leading bowler Bill O'Reilly, leading batsman and vice-captain Stan McCabe, Leo O'Brien and Chuck Fleetwood-Smith—were summoned by the Board of Control to respond to allegations that they were undermining Bradman.

When Bradman was dismissed in his final Test innings in 1948 for a duck, Fingleton and O'Reilly were reported to have laughed hysterically in the pressbox, causing E. W. Swanton to comment, "I thought they were going to have a stroke.