The Bodyline Hypocrisy: Conversations with Harold Larwood

By Michael Arnold

This fresh analysis of the EnglandAustralia "Bodyline Controversy" of 1932-33 uncovers hypocrisy on both sides of the furore, drawing on exclusive interviews with English "villain of the piece" (and Australian émigré) Harold Larwood. At the time, Australia was a young, isolated country where sport was a religion, winning essential, and the media prone to distortion. In England, the MCC was pressurised by a British government fearing trade repercussions, leaving Harold Larwood and Douglas Jardine to be hung out to dry on a clothes-line of political expediency. The Bodyline Hypocrisy analyzes the influence of Australian culture on events, and on exaggerations and distortions previously accepted as fact. It reveals that the MCC granted Honorary Membership to Larwood in 1949, influenced by its Australian president. And now even Ian Chappell has stated that Jardine's leg-theory tactic was simply playing Test cricket with whatever weapons were available. Times change and the truth emerges.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Apr 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781909178908

Book preview

First published by Know the Score, 2008

Second edition, published by Pitch Publishing, 2013

Pitch Publishing

A2 Yeoman Gate

Yeoman Way

Durrington

BN13 3QZ

www.pitchpublishing.co.uk

© Michael Arnold, 2013

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.

A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-90917-845-8

eBook ISBN 978-1-909178-90-8

Cover design by Olner Design.

Typesetting and origination by Graham Hales.

eBook conversion by eBookPartnership.com

Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Harold Larwood

Australia – the Culture

Australia and Sport

1932/33 – Betting and Beer?

The Australian Media

Leg-Theory – Was It So Impossible?

1932/33 Australian Test Selections and Resources

Douglas Jardine – The Myths and the Man

Wyatt and Allen

Test Captains – England and Amateur Control

Test Captains – Jardine and the Australians

Timing of the Australian Complaint

The Demanded Apology

Banning of Leg-Theory

Implications, Inferences, Conclusions?

Appendices: Scores and Averages

Field placing analysis

Bibliography

About the author

Photographs

Acknowledgements

ATTEMPTING A task such as this for the very first time is something of a daunting prospect. You quickly realise that irrespective of your personal knowledge of facts, history and personalities, putting all this down on paper in a fair and coherent manner is not as easy as it may first appear to be.

In the early days I contacted David Frith as a well-known author of numerous cricket books and in particular because of his book The Bodyline Autopsy. I am grateful to him for having taken the time to briefly correspond with me, a mere tyro, in an area where he is a recognised figure. However I think he would concede that he became very cautious when I mentioned Harold’s admiration of Douglas Jardine; it was almost as though he felt he was writing to some sort of heretic.

I am also grateful to Christopher Douglas, author of Douglas Jardine – Spartan Cricketer for sharing with me his views on certain issues. I’m sure I’m not in breach of any confidence when I say that in writing his book he too had encountered what appeared to be an entrenched reluctance to concede the possibility that Jardine had been misrepresented. It seems it was important to maintain the received view – as though some convention was at stake.

When the book was in fairly basic format I was encouraged by the enthusiasm of my brother, Christopher; he thought it had great potential. Chris, who now lives in England, had earlier lived here for many years. Like me he is a cricket enthusiast and was familiar with the cultural background of this country that had coloured much of the events and reactions. He knew what I was writing about.

To cricket writer Stephen Chalke, my thanks for his help and suggestions regarding text emphasis and style. Also my very special thanks to John Young and his colleagues at the Hampshire Cricket Society and the Southampton Hospital Broadcasting Unit for their proof readings, encouragement and suggestions; their contributions have been invaluable – in particular the comment that the book was long overdue.

To Doctor Richard Janus of Sydney, my thanks for his diagnosis as to the likely sickness that caused Stan McCabe to lose form so badly. This is important because this is an angle that does not appear to have been examined before.

I should also acknowledge the information, reports and opinions provided by the ninety or so authors of the books to which I have referred; they are detailed in the bibliography. Many of them are no longer with us but without them this work would have been impossible.

To my wife Kathy, my gratitude for her patient assistance in editing, and placing my thoughts in a more coherent order in many areas.

Lastly, but mostly, my huge gratitude to the late Harold Larwood – gratitude for all those fascinating chats and his thoughts on so many intriguing issues. Thank you Harold, for had it not been for you, not one word of this would ever have been written.

Michael Arnold

        Sydney

        January 2013

Introduction

TEST MATCHES between Australia and England commenced in 1876/77 and had become a contest for the Ashes after the 1882/83 series. By the time Jardine’s side landed at Freemantle in 1932, there had been 97 Test matches between the two countries and, although keenly fought, they had, for the most part, been played in a spirit of sportsmanship.

The Ashes as a cricket trophy owes its origin to a mock obituary that lamented the death of English cricket and appeared in The Sporting Times in 1882 after Australia had beaten a full-strength England team for the first time in England, at the Oval. The obituary added that the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. The following winter in Australia an English team reversed the result and certain ladies burned a stump, sealed the ashes in a small urn, and presented the urn to the England captain, who subsequently bequeathed the urn to Marylebone Cricket Club. The trophy is permanently kept at Lord’s and the fight for possession of this tiny urn has been keenly fought for over many years by England and Australia.

In 1928/29 Australia had discovered Don Bradman, a young batsman of quite remarkable ability, who was to assemble some enormous scores and who literally off his own bat was largely responsible for the Australian victory in the 1930 series, and Australia were confident he would repeat that performance in the 1932/33 matches. There seemed to be no reason why he should not – after all, if he could mount such huge scores in England, what was he going to produce on his own home soil?

England’s leg-theory style of fast bowling made it difficult for a batsman to attempt to score runs without risking losing his wicket, and it was particularly effective when bowled by the extreme speed and consistent accuracy of the unique Harold Larwood. It was believed that this style of bowling attack would be particularly effective in preventing Bradman from mounting any of his dominating innings and the theory was proved when his highest score of the series, in the second Test at Melbourne, was only 103 runs scored on an unusually slow pitch.

Four of the five Test matches were won by England and one by Australia but as they were about to lose the third Test, the Australians complained bitterly and publicly to MCC about the leg-theory tactics used by England for which the Australian press had concocted the expression bodyline. Interestingly, although the leg-theory style of bowling attack had been used by England in the first two Tests, England winning the first and Australia the second, hardly a word had been said by either the Australian players or the Australian media at that time.

Previous authors have mentioned the Great Depression and the demands being made by the Bank of England as factors in the Australian reaction at the time, and those are certainly likely issues. During the 1920s, there was considerable immigration from the United Kingdom to Australia and it is probable that this influx of migrants could have contributed to the perception that Australian jobs were being taken by the new arrivals. Another important factor was the 1929 Wall Street Crash, and this coupled with the rapidly falling demand for Australian exports and commodities, saw a massive downward pressure on workers’ wages. It is interesting to note that although the debt commitments of both the Federal and State Governments during this time remained the same, the stagnant economy resulted in greatly reduced tax revenues so the very real prospect of Australia defaulting on its foreign debt was of great concern to the Federal and State Governments. Another issue for Australians was that practically all of the debt was owed to the Bank of England.

At the behest of the Bank of England, and to reduce the likelihood of default, the State and the Federal Government agreed to slash their spending, cancel public works, cut public service wages and to decrease welfare benefits and thus the crippling effects of the Depression were made even worse. The average man in the street would naturally only have been concerned with his ever-shrinking wage packet and not the underlying political and financial reasons, or even the implications of a national debt default. However, the local newspapers kept fanning the fire of discontent and anti-English resentment and left no one in doubt as to who was to blame for the social stress and widespread unemployment. Responsibility was laid squarely in London at the door of the Bank of England and thus by natural association, it was England. There has recently been the spectacle of violent reactions in Greece to economy measures forced on the country by the euro crisis. Although in no way responsible for the situation in Greece the anger was aimed at Germany. This was exactly the reaction in Australia – except that the target was England.

The Great Depression hit Australia much harder than any other country and only Germany experienced more serious unemployment. The unemployment rate in Britain hit an overall high of 16% but in Australia it was nearly double that and in December 1932, right in the middle of the Ashes tour, it had reached a disturbing figure of 29%. In the state of New South Wales, it was running as high as 32%, and South Australia was even higher at 35% whereas in the United States, the highest unemployment rate was 25%. In these difficult times, sport was perhaps the only panacea that the people had, and it is easy to see how it came to play an important role in the psyche of the Australian public, not only as a relief from the straitened financial circumstances of many families but the seemingly endless hopelessness of ever finding full-time employment. When things went wrong for the home team, it was a knee-jerk reaction to blame someone else for the cause of the loss. With such widespread financial heartaches and community discontent, accompanied by violence in a number of quarters, more hopes than usual would understandably have rested upon the seemingly invincible dominance of the great Australian hope in the shape of the young Donald Bradman.

However what has not been mentioned by other authors is the volatile nature of Australian society. Australia has an ongoing history of riots, confrontation and civil unrest and lurches from one controversy to another. There were a series of violent confrontations during the early part of the 20th century: Brisbane in 1919; Broome 1920; Melbourne 1923 and the Hunter Valley in 1929. With a working-class culture pre-disposed to resist and oppose authority, the social pressures of the Depression provoked a riot in Adelaide in January 1931 involving over a thousand men, women and children and in June of that year another riot known as Bloody Friday erupted in Sydney. In July the following year a further riot occurred in Cairns to be followed by another in Sydney in October 1932 where over 800 people took part. Some 15 months later hundreds were involved in a riot at Kalgoorlie where the cause was resentment at Italian and Yugoslav workers simply because they were different. Jardine’s men had arrived in the midst of this time of civil and social turbulence when even the smallest issue was likely to provoke a revolt.

To add to the building-up of yet more dark clouds on the political horizon, in May of 1932, the then Labor Premier of New South Wales, Black Jack Lang, was dismissed from office by the State Governor, Air Vice-Marshall Sir Phillip Game, an Englishman, for refusing to honour interest payments on huge debts owed by a bankrupt State Government to London financial institutions. Game’s decision, which was logical and courageous but constitutionally questionable, angered and offended all Labor voters, and fuelled even further the existing anti-English sentiments in a large portion of the populace. Faced with this combination of complex factors, any visiting England cricket team, under any captain, was going to be treading on eggshells because under any circumstances an English victory would be resented. This was especially so in a country that had a history of cricket crowd violence and where instead of evolving, nationalism was consistently being created and exhorted by an inflammatory press. Even in the 21st century the 1915 Dardanelles campaign is still milked for all it is worth each year by an Australian media claiming that the nation was born on the beaches of Gallipoli and implying that Australia alone had faced the Turks. The legend of the Australian soldier, even 100 years later still called Digger, is embellished by a country impatient to create a history of its own.

The roots of the bodyline imbroglio were as much if not more sociological than they were cricketing. In addition to considering cricketing comments made by other writers, some of the uniquely Australian cultural elements that influenced and/or were directly responsible for the reaction, will be looked at later in the book. As far as previous authors are concerned I make no apology for discussing some of the more questionable aspects of their writings and especially the almost non-stop demonising of Douglas Jardine; some of the comments and allegation about him are so blatantly biased they are difficult to take seriously. Many of the cultural and sociological factors were of far greater influence than events on the field and are unique to Australia and although it is understandable that they should not have been featured by Australian authors, all British writers appear to have ignored or avoided them as they joined the anti-Jardine bandwagon following his death. However it is time to consider all of these and uncover the truth, for any campaign whether military or sporting is shaped by the environment in which it is contested.

It should also be noted that aspects, factors or issues described are not necessarily consistently representative of Australia as a whole. The four chapters – Culture, Sport, Betting/Beer and the Media – are specifically included because they were influences that had a distinct bearing on the events at that time and sometimes continue to colour the Australian landscape today. There are differences in the way Australia and England approach and play Test cricket and their respective selection policies, and in the period I am writing about these differences contributed to the furore that subsequently erupted. Particularly useful in this respect has been the book, The Lucky Country, by Australian academic, philosopher and journalist Donald Horne. It is a radical critique of Australian society and was first published to great acclaim in 1964, with an updated edition produced in 1998. The book is considered authoritative on and pertinent to a variety of subjects within the Australian culture that might otherwise be unknown to the casual observer.

I have also referred to Australian Professor Geoffrey Blainey’s book, The Tyranny of Distance. Published in 1966, it is a history that describes the extent to which isolation and location shaped and moulded Australia, and it has been a valuable source for background material.

This book has been written after living very happily in Australia for 30 years and therefore having had the opportunity to observe at first hand the pivotal national position played by sport and the manner in which Australia has a tendency to over-react when defending its own. With a temperate climate that is sometimes a little hot in summer but never really cold in winter, present-day cosmopolitan Sydney provides a most enjoyable lifestyle. The city can boast a wonderful range of international class entertainment and cuisines and the world famous Sydney Opera House, host to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, produces music, theatre, ballet and opera that would rival anywhere.

Douglas Jardine would have great difficulty recognising the Australia of today with the isolated raw culture that exploded around him. It has changed dramatically and is now far more worldly, sophisticated and confident in itself, satellite television and cheap international travel have brought the world to Australia and vice-versa and wine sales in Australia exceed those of beer. However even now instances of parochial sensitivity regularly arise and old attitudes still stubbornly linger on – examples of what caused the culture to explode in 1933.

Harold Larwood

IN THE Famous Cricketers series, published by the Association of Cricketing Statisticians, Peter Wynne-Thomas says of Harold Larwood that his achievements in English first-class cricket are unequalled by any other fast bowler of the 20th century. He headed the first-class bowling averages in five seasons – 1927, 1928, 1931, 1932 and 1936. No other fast bowler can claim to have exercised such authority over his contemporaries.

Between 1925 and 1936 Larwood dominated the County Championship, taking 1,084 wickets at an average of 15.47. Unlike some other notable fast bowlers of his era, his energy did not burn out after two or three seasons but instead, for more than a decade, he was the most feared bowler in England and indeed the world. Australia at that time had no such talent to match his fearsome ability.

Although exact comparisons are not possible, he was undoubtedly one of the fastest bowlers ever and one of the most accurate. Suffice it to say that such was his speed, ground staff at Trent Bridge had to keep three complete sets of stumps ready because he smashed so many when clean-bowling batsmen. After only 12 months of playing county cricket for Nottinghamshire, he was selected to play Test-level cricket for England in June 1926, and in a total of 21 Test matches between 1926 and 1933, he took 78 wickets at an average of 28.35. His most notable success against Australia came in the 1932/33 series when he took 33 wickets at an average of 19.51.

Harold Larwood was born on 14th November 1904 in Nuncargate, a coal-mining village a few miles to the northwest of Nottingham. He left school at 13 and worked in the local Co-op store for a year before becoming a pony pit-boy in the local Annesley mine. His fast bowling exploits for Nuncargate and Annesley in the Notts Junior League attracted the attention of the county selectors and resulted in a trial for Notts in April 1923 and at the age of 18 he was taken on the county ground-staff at the weekly wage of 32 shillings. A legend was about to be born.

It was on a late September afternoon in 1990 that I found myself knocking at the door of a modest bungalow in Leonard Avenue in Kingsford, a southern suburb of Sydney. I had come to see Harold Larwood, this celebrated fast bowler, whose reputation for ferocious speed had not dimmed despite the passing of some 60 years and the events that had cemented his reputation and place in cricket history. I had telephoned him earlier and asked if he would be good enough to sign my copy of his book The Larwood Story. He said he would be delighted and added: Come around any time.

The door was opened by Harold himself and I suddenly realised that I was actually face-to-face with the legendary fast bowler. I don’t know what I imagined he would look like but facing me was a friendly, lightly tanned and bespectacled, fit-looking man of approximately 5ft 8ins in height. His bald head was haloed by grey hair and in his distinct Nottinghamshire accent he invited me into a small front room that was crammed with cricket memorabilia. On the walls were numerous team and individual photographs of the 1932/33 tour and of other cricketing memories of England. There were a few mounted cricket balls and stumps and other cricket paraphernalia in a glass cabinet.

However, in pride-of-place on the mantelpiece, was a silver ashtray inscribed: TO HAROLD. FOR THE ASHES. FROM A GRATEFUL SKIPPER.

We talked for about twenty minutes and then he signed my book. As I was leaving he said: Come around any time, Mike, if you’d like to have a chat.

And so began a friendship that I shall always treasure. From that time on I did go round for a chat on many occasions, right up until about a month before he died in 1995. We would always sit in his small front room, surrounded by his memorabilia. Naturally, our conversations were primarily centred on cricket and he loved to reminisce about his time in the game, the people he knew and played both with and against, and the general comparisons between then and now. Sometimes he would have a cup of tea and every now and again I would bring around a couple of bottles of beer, which he enjoyed. He always seemed to be completely relaxed and affable. It was very easy to have a conversation with Harold who would not worry even if you had interrupted whatever he might have been doing. He was always only too happy to talk about his beloved cricket.

During the course of these conversations, I was always amazed at the ease with which he could recall some of the minutest details of incidents that had taken place in county and Test matches during the 1920s and 1930s. He spoke of his admiration for Jack Hobbs – the best bat ever, he said – and Walter Hammond – very good, but a bit patchy – and his views on Hobbs and Bradman were interesting. Hobbs, he reckoned, was the best bat he had ever seen and the better all-round bat on any type of pitch, but he said: Bradman seemed to be driven by having some point to make every time he came to the crease. He couldn’t explain why this was so. It was just an impression, he said. He mentioned Hobbs’ masterly batting on a vicious pitch at the Oval Test in 1926 and again at Melbourne on the 1928/29 tour. I saw both those innings, he said, and in those conditions there’s no way Bradman would have survived.

Hobbs, Harold thought, was a great team man, whereas Bradman was a Bradman man, who would take little interest in batting if the pitch was difficult (Bradman’s throwing away of his wicket on the turning pitch at Lord’s in 1934 seems to support this view). On almost any wicket, he said, Hobbs was the complete master and there was enormous admiration and affection for him.

For Bradman there was huge admiration too, but little affection. Hobbs was popular, just as a person and Bradman, of course, also had massive popularity, but only as a run maker. As Harold gradually got to know me, he opened up on the 1932/33 tour. This was when his name became synonymous with a style of bowling that the England captain, Douglas Jardine, described as leg-theory, but which the Australian press called bodyline.

The outstanding feature of these conversations about that tour was Harold’s unwavering support for and admiration of Douglas Jardine who he said was nothing like the aloof snob that he has been made out to be in many quarters. He was just shy, said Harold, rather like an actor who had a stage image but was a very quiet person in private – like Alec Guinness, if you like. He was the best captain I ever played under or ever saw. He took care of everything and, more than that, he was quite content to bear on his shoulders all the brickbats that were hurled at the English team by the Australian press and barrackers. We had the odd disagreement – you always do – but he was a great captain.

Nothing would shift him from this view, and no amount of questioning would produce anything other than the same simple explanation. As to the Australian complaints about leg-theory, he used to chuckle and say: You know, they said nowt about it until they had lost the third Test. This observation is also made by Bill Bowes, a fellow fast bowler on that tour, in his book Express Deliveries. No one else seems to have pursued it.

The more I talked to Harold and the more I listened to his reminiscences, the more I began to think that the conventional view of Douglas Jardine in 1932/33 was inaccurate and it was as if he had been portrayed to justify subsequent criticism. A picture of a totally different person was emerging from the haughty, condescending, Australian-hating one so often described and in its place I was seeing a quiet, sensitive man, meticulous in his planning, caring about his team, but uncompromising and courageous in the execution of his mission. This unstinting admiration of Douglas Jardine