When Cricket Threatened The British Empire

On January 18, 1933, when England and Australia were locked in a grim struggle for the Ashes in the third test at Adelaide, the Australian Board of Control (for cricket) sent the following cablegram to MCC, then as now the governing body of both English and international cricket:

“Body-line bowling has assumed such proportions as to menace the best interests of the game, making protection of the body the main consideration. This is causing intensely bitter feeling between players as well as injury. In our opinion it is unsportsmanlike. Unless stopped at once, it is likely to upset the friendly relations between Australia and England.”

In substance, the cable was charging the English cricket team with using an unsportsmanlike tactic called ‘Body-line’ that was so dangerous that it could lead to a breach between England and Australia. Australia was then a self-governing colony of the British Empire (unlike India which was under direct British rule). This was a charge the MCC and the British Government would never tolerate from a mere colony. You could call the British murderers and rapists, but never question their sportsmanship or sense of fairlpay. It soon snowballed into a major political crisis.

How could this be? How could a mere cricket match make a friendly country like Australia threaten to withdraw from the Empire, when today, even under the shadow of war and terrorism, India and Pakistan play cricket in the friendliest spirit? To understand this, one must travel back in time to 1930 when the sun never set on the British Empire and the MCC was seen as the epitome of the imperial establishment. This imperial pride and the sense of superiority that divided England and the colonies needs to be understood before one can make sense of the political earthquake launched by the cable to the MCC.

The MCC was then controlled by titled aristocrats like Sir Stanley Jackson, Lord Hawke and other peers of the empire, some with double barreled names like Hore-Ruthven, Leveson Gower, Gascoyne-Cecil, sprinkled with a sampling of Indian royalty like His Highness Kumar Shri Duleepsinhji (Ranji’s uncle), His Highness Nawab of Pataudi (the father of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, no-longer-Nawab) and the like. Even among cricketers there were ‘amateurs’ meaning members of the upper class, often sporting imposing multiple initials like G.O.B. Allen, A.P.F. Chapman and J.W.H.T. Douglas. Then came the lowly professionals addressed only by the last name as Larwood, Hammond, Sutcliffe, etc, never mind they included some of the greatest names in cricket. These were not the men to put up with charges of unsportsmanlike play from some Australians.

Coming from the upper class stable was the English captain, the Anglo-Indian Douglas Jardine, born in Bombay to Scottish parents. He had lived in India for nine years before his parents took him to England fearing that he might become Indianized, and what was worse, lose his fair complexion and start looking like an Indian. (This was a common superstition at the time.) Jardine’s first language was Hindi, or Hindustani as it was then called, and he spoke English with a sing-song drawl that was characteristic of Anglo-Indians at the time, but infuriated the Australians. (Those days, Anglo-Indian meant one of British parentage born in India and not one of mixed blood.)

Jardine, a solid if hardly brilliant batsman, was appointed captain of the English team to tour Australia for the 1932 – 33 series for two reasons: First, he was a brilliant and ruthless tactician who would stop at nothing to defeat the Australians and bring back the Ashes. Second, as a member of the upper class he would show the Aussies their proper place in the imperial order. In addition to defeating England in the 1930 Ashes series, thanks to the exploits of a brash 22 year-old youngster named Don Bradman, the upstart Aussies were creating problems for British manufacturers by imposing import duties and taxes at a time when the world was mired in economic depression. They were also threatening to default on loans, demanding concessions.

This political background must be kept in mind in evaluating British reactions during what came to be known as the Bodyline Crisis. It was as much a political crisis as a cricket crisis; it was resolved only when politicians including the Dominion Secretary ‘Jimmy’ Thomas got involved in the dispute. This is probably unique in the annals of sport. In the end, both Jardine and his greatest bowler, Harold Larwood, were sacrificed in the interests of Anglo-Australian relations.

Jardine rather than Larwood was the key figure in the drama. He had all the right connections: He went to the right schools— Winchester and Oxford where he was a mediocre student but good at sports. He played for Surrey and England, later captaining both with success. He never let anyone, especially an Australian forget his upper class background. Visitors generally found him absorbed in reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, though it is not known if he ever made it beyond its General Prologue or if he owned any other book. In spite of this affectation, several people who knew him swore he was no snob. But the Australians detested him: he was the wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time.

To return to the Bodyline Crisis, the source of the problem was Bradman’s stupendous batting in the 1930 Ashes series. After taking a drubbing in the series after World War I, England had regained the ashes in 1926, and retained it in 1928 – 29 by a convincing 4 – 1 margin. English cricket between 1925 and 1939 was probably the strongest it has ever been. In addition to batsmen like Hobbs, Sutcliffe, Hammond, Duleepsinhji and others, it had a strong bowling attack of combined pace and spin.

Australia went into the 1930 Ashes series as underdogs, but young Bradman upset all calculations by destroying the vaunted English bowling attack that included Harold Larwood and Maurice Tate. His scores in the five tests were: 8 and 131; 254 and 1; 334; 14; and 232, for a total of 974 in only seven innings at an average of 139.14. He showed this was no flash in the pan when he was equally successful against the visiting West Indians in Australia. He was even more devastating against the South Africans scoring 806 in only four test matches at an average 201.50! He was still only a boy of 24.

Bradman had become an Australian hero for bearding the English Lion in its own den and made no attempt to hide his enjoyment. Economic and political tensions had given rise to deep resentments in Australia against Britain and her attitudes. As an Australian journalist wrote, to beat the English was a special goal, for “The special quality came from class antipathy and post-colonial irritations.”

English bowlers were terrified of bowling to Bradman again. England was the better balanced team, with a superior bowling attack but Bradman made all the difference. Jardine and the selectors recognized that something had to be done to curb Bradman’s gargantuan scoring feats to have any hope of winning the Ashes. So Jardine went about methodically to find a way of countering Bradman.

Curiously, the India-born Jardine had come within a whisker of captaining the Indian team that visited England in 1932, playing its only test match at Lord’s. Had this happened, India might have won its first test match in 1932 instead of 1952, for it was Jardine who saved England from the embarrassment of defeat with scores of 79 and 85 not out. India then had a formidable bowling attack led by Mohammed Nissar, a great fast bowler, and Amar Singh, arguably the greatest bowler of any kind that India ever produced and an attacking batsman. He was a faster version of Richard Hadlee.

Jardine’s plan to curb Bradman (and others) was simple: instead of bowling at the stumps, his fast bowlers would bowl at the batsman’s body with short pitched deliveries aimed at the head with a packed leg side field of six to seven fielders. The batsman, instead of defending the stumps would be forced to defend his upper body and head with the bat. This would sooner or later end with the batsman getting caught by the close in fielders as he defended himself. Jardine called it ‘fast leg theory’, but the press and the players saw through it and called it Bodyline. The result was, as the Australian Board of Control put it in its cable to the MCC: “Body-line bowling has assumed such proportions …making protection of the body the main consideration.”

The key weapons in Jardine’s blitzkrieg against Australian bodies were his two fast bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce, especially Larwood. He was a small man as fast bowlers go, standing a little over five foot seven (174.5 cms) weighing only seventy kg at his peak as a fast bowler. His speed was phenomenal, especially in Australia where he seemed to have consistently bowled in the 95 to 100 mph (153 to 161 kph), at times attaining even greater speed. This is faster than Shoaib Akhtar at his fastest. To go with this he was supremely accurate. One can get an idea of Larwood by noting that he was consistently faster than Shoaib Akhtar and as accurate as Anil Kumble.

In this context, we need to dispense with the superstition that cricketers today are bigger and stronger than in the past and must therefore be better. This may be true of batting where better equipment, especially helmets and other protective gear have made a big difference, but bowling has not changed. Also such generalizations may apply to ordinary cricketers, but not to prodigies like Bradman, Tendulkar or Larwood. After all, fast bowlers today are not any better than those thirty years ago, like Malcom Marshall, Dennis Lillee, Imran Khan and their contemporaries. The same holds for spinners, Subhash Gupte, Bishen Bedi, Ramadhin and Valentine, and going further back, Clarence Grimmett and Bill O’Reilly. The law of averages does not apply to geniuses.

Jardine unleashed his brutal tactics against the Australians and England won the first test at Sydney even though Stan McCabe scored a magnificent, unbeaten 184. Bradman did not play due to illness and his presence might have made a difference. He returned for the second test at Melbourne and led Australia to victory with an unbeaten century.

With the series hanging in the balance, in the third test at Adelaide Jardine pulled out all stops and mounted a fierce attack on the Australians. The Adelaide wicket was fast and Larwood was particularly deadly. Several batsmen were hit, with the Australian captain Bill Woodfull suffering a severe injury just near the heart. Bertie Oldfield, the Australian wicketkeeper had his skull cracked by an express delivery from Larwood. This is what led to the cable from the Australian Board of Control charging the English team, and Jardine in particular with unsportsmanlike tactics.

Furious at the charge, the MCC cabled back: “We, Marylebone Cricket Club [MCC] deplore your cable. We deprecate your opinion that there has been unsportsmanlike play. We have fullest confidence in captain, team and managers, and are convinced that they would do nothing to infringe either the Laws of Cricket or the spirit of the game. …but if it is such as to jeopardize the good relations… and you consider it desirable to cancel the remainder of programme, we would consent with great reluctance.”

But neither side wanted to cancel the series and lose money. Things were somehow patched up, and England won the series 4 – 1. But it was soon clear to politicians on both sides that the ill-will generated by bodyline might have serious repercussions that went beyond cricket. One good thing to come out of it was that negotiations were taken out of the hands of bumbling cricket officials with their penchant for maladroit cable exchanges and professional diplomats took over.

The seriousness of the crisis is reflected in the caliber of the people who got involved in the negotiations. Australia was represented by Sir Alexander Hore-Ruthven, soon to be Governor General as Lord Gowrie. On the English side, the outgoing MCC president Viscount Lewisham was replaced by Lord Hailsham. As Leader of the House of Lords and Secretary of State for War, Hailsham was a political heavyweight. He made it clear to the MCC bigwigs where his priorities lay— he didn’t want the Empire’s economy damaged by some blasted cricket match.

One of the problems was that the MCC and the English spectators in general had only news reports to go by and had not seen bodyline (like on TV). But they soon had the benefit of a demonstration. The West Indies were touring England in 1933, and their fast bowlers Learie Constantine and Manny Martindale unleashed bodyline against the English batsmen in the Old Trafford (Manchester) test. Constantine was past his prime, neither as fast nor as accurate as Larwood, and the Old Trafford wicket was a slow one, but still he had English batsmen on the run. Their top batsman Walter Hammond had his chin split open and threatened to quit cricket if bodyline continued. Constantine later indicated that the MCC (and Lord Hailsham) had asked him to bowl bodyline at the English batsmen.

Slowly, it began to dawn that bodyline was undesirable and the MCC would have to outlaw it. Still there were some holdouts. Lord Hawke, an old warhorse and a power at Lord’s demonstrated with his umbrella how bodyline could be played— without of course anyone bowling to him. On seeing this, the Australian representative Robbie Macdonald told him that the next Australian team to tour England might include four fast bowlers instead of the customary two. “Reprisals by Gad!” roared his Lordship, but Macdonald only smiled. MCC eventually banned bodyline.

Australia toured England in 1934 with the MCC assuring that bodyline would not be employed. Actually it was unnecessary. English fans wanted to see Larwood bowl to Bradman in the test series, but Larwood was seized with panic at the thought of bowling to Bradman again. As Duncan Hamilton wrote in his largely pro-Larwood and (anti-Bradman) biography:

“Larwood blatantly lied [claiming he was not fit] to cover …the genuine fear that ‘Bradman might murder me.’ The pitches in England were appreciably slower than the Australian wickets, and so was Larwood. If Bradman got hold of him, Larwood knew he would flog him to ‘all parts’, a prospect that filled him with terror.” Larwood himself admitted in private: “I didn’t want to be embarrassed before my own people.”

Actually Jardine (and Larwood) had been lucky in Australia. Bradman didn’t play in the first test when McCabe played his great innings. Had Bradman also played, with the Australian victory in the next Melbourne test, England might have gone into the third (Adelaide) test trailing in the series. Further, the Australian captain Bill Woodfull, in an almost Gandhian gesture, refused to retaliate as a matter of principle. Hammond and Sutcliffe, the two top English batsmen admitted that they wouldn’t have lasted an hour against bodyline— Larwood or no Larwood. Australia kept its hold on the Ashes for another 19 years until Len Hutton regained it for England in 1953. Bradman had retired in 1948.

So Larwood decided to give up test cricket rather than face Bradman. Very foolishly he had made the situation worse with personal attacks on Bradman and his character in articles and a book. Actually, they were ghostwritten and Larwood had taken money from the publishers without bothering to read the proofs. (One cannot imagine Bradman doing something this.) So he had to get out. He couldn’t claim illness as he was still making money in county cricket as a professional. So he came up with a conspiracy theory— the politicians were after him.

LARWOOD: “I REFUSE TO PLAY IN ANY MORE TESTS. POLITICIANS TRYING TO HOUND ME OUT OF TEST CRICKET… THEY FEARED I WOULD BUST THE EMPIRE,” screamed the headlines.

Politicians scoffed at the idea. By this time the political crisis had blown over and Larwood was not the bowler he was. No one knew it better than Larwood himself, and possibly Jardine. Their success in Australia had been a flash in the pan, and could not be replicated under English conditions and a slower Larwood. No doubt recognizing this, Jardine too announced his retirement from test cricket citing various ‘business’ reasons. This was nonsense. Unlike Bradman who excelled at everything he put his hand to, cricket was the only thing that Jardine and Larwood were good at. Jardine qualified as a lawyer had an unsuccessful career and faded into obscurity. He died of lung cancer at 58.

Larwood’s story was touched with sadness. The hero of Bodyline was shunned by the British cricket establishment. It was a tragedy that unlike Bradman, his talent was not matched by comparable intelligence or judgment. While acknowledging Bradman’s genius, he carried a grudge and wrote disparagingly about his character. Bradman did not descend to this. He even congratulated Larwood when he was made an MBE by the Queen. When he died Bradman said: “Larwood will go down in history as one of the greatest bowlers of all time.” In 1950, Larwood immigrated to Australia and ended his days peacefully, as a watchman and shipping supervisor with a soft drinks (Pepsi) company.

This is the strange story of a storm in the teacup called the ‘Bodyline Crisis’ that started with a bang but ended in whimper. The whole thing now looks ridiculous— an imperial folly. As Napoleon once said: “From the sublime to the ridiculous is but one step.”