Long before I met him I knew him well. My father told me he was the greatest fast bowler that ever drew breath and paid him the ultimate compliment of hero worship by copying his run to the wicket. Jack Fingleton, who also knew what he was talking about, said he was the best fast bowler he faced. He was, said Fingo, ‘the master’. Harold Larwood was a giant in my imagination, a legendary figure whose bowling frightened the greatest batsman there has ever been (and a few more besides) and in doing so created a political brouhaha of such resonance it echoes still, sixty years on.
When I first saw him standing outside a Sydney restaurant in 1979, he looked like one of the miners who would loiter around the pubs on Sunday mornings waiting for the doors to open at mid-day. He seemed uncomfortable in his suit as if it was his Sunday best, his trilby hat was at a jaunty angle and he was smoking a cigarette which he cupped in the palm of his hand as if shielding it from a wind. He was medium height with good shoulders and the strong, square hands of someone who had done some shovelling in his life as well as bowling. My father, in heaven at the time, would have been delighted with my impression that he and his great hero were peas from the same pod.
On the other hand, I had expected something altogether more substantial, someone more in keeping with the image I had of a man who terrorised opponents and whose fearsome reputation was such that at one moment in time governments were in thrall as he ran in to bowl. In all of sport there never was a story to match the Bodyline saga. At its heart was the ultimate sporting challenge: a contest between the two greatest players in the world. In 1932–33, Donald Bradman was in his prime, the finest batsman of his generation, or any other before or since. Harold Larwood was also in his pomp, the fastest bowler in the world and about to prove himself the most lethal and unerring there has ever been. The impresario of this world title contest was Douglas Jardine, the captain of England, patrician, implacable and a terrible snob who treated Australians with a contempt he never bothered to conceal. The story that unfolded around these three characters had everything except sex and a happy ending. I was tempted to say it would have made a marvellous soap for television, except one was produced and a right mess they made of it.
The controversy stirred by Bodyline pursued Harold Larwood all his days. It changed him from a cricketer into a hunted man who hid away in a sweet shop in Blackpool before being persuaded by Jack Fingleton to seek a new life in Australia, where he ended his days surrounded by his large family in suburban Sydney amid the accents that once denounced him as the devil. It was Jack Fingleton and Keith Miller who arranged my meeting with Harold; Bill O’Reilly was there, too; and Arthur Morris and Ray Lindwall, so you could say I was in the best of company. There were so many questions I wanted to ask but dare not unless I turned what was a friendly lunch into a press conference. In any case, in that company I was superfluous to requirements except as a witness to what happened.
We sat at a round table on a spring day in Sydney. We all drank wine except Harold who said he was a beer man. ‘Always had a pint when I was bowling,’ he said. ‘We used to sneak it on with the soft drinks. A pint for me and one for Bill Voce. You must put back what you sweat out,’ he said. ‘I hope you weren’t drunk when you bowled at me,’ said Jack Fingleton. ‘I didn’t need any inspiration to get you out,’ Harold Larwood replied. Jack said of all the bowlers he faced Larwood was the fastest and had the best control. ‘He was a very great bowler. Used to skid the bouncer. Throat ball,’ said Jack. Larwood took the compliment and said: ‘You might not have been the best batsman I bowled against but you were certainly the bravest. I could hit you all right but you wouldn’t go down. You weren’t frightened, not like one or two I could mention but won’t,’ he said.
Tiger O’Reilly said he was once sent out to bat against Harold when the ball was flying about, having been instructed by his skipper to stay at the crease at all costs. He was endeavouring to follow these instructions, and was halfway through his backlift when Larwood bowled him a ball he sensed but did not see. ‘I felt the draught as it went by and heard it hit Duckworth’s gloves,’ said Tiger. Being a sensible fellow he decided on a new method which, as he described it, involved him standing alongside the square leg umpire with his bat stretched towards the stumps. ‘It was from this position,’ said Tiger, ‘I was perfectly placed to observe a most extraordinary occurrence. Larwood bowled me a ball of such pace and ferocity that it struck the off bail and reduced it to a small pile of sawdust.’ When I first told this story a reader wrote to say that what O’Reilly claimed was clearly impossible. I wrote back informing the reader that O’Reilly was Irish and heard nothing more on the matter.
Jack Fingleton told Harold Larwood: ‘You didn’t need to bowl Bodyline. You were a good enough bowler to get anyone out by normal methods.’ It was the first time during our luncheon that anyone had mentioned ‘Bodyline’. Until then, the word had ticked away in the corner of the room like an unexploded bomb. Harold smiled. ‘I was merely following the instructions of my captain,’ he said. He produced from his jacket pocket a yellow duster and unfolded it to reveal a silver ash tray. The inscription said: ‘To a great bowler from a grateful captain. D.R. Jardine’. The lettering was faint from nearly fifty years of spit and polish.
Jardine was the Field Marshal of Bodyline, Larwood his secret weapon. Jardine was the strategist, Larwood the assassin. I think it wrong to portray Larwood as the unwitting accomplice as some have done. It underestimates his strength of character, denies his intelligence and, most of all, does not take into account his determination to show Bradman and the rest of the Aussies who the boss really was. But whereas Jardine fully understood the consequences of what he planned, Larwood was never likely to begin to fathom the undercurrents of intrigue created by his captain’s strategy. They did for him in the end.
At our lunch, Harold recalled the day in 1933 when an Australian supporter accosted him and said: ‘I hope you never play cricket again.’ Harold Larwood replied: ‘How dare you say that when cricket is my life, my job, my livelihood.’ It wasn’t too long before his critic’s wish was granted and Harold Larwood, who thought he had been playing cricket for a living, wondered if he might have been mistaken.
After Jardine’s team had thrashed the Australians, Harold Larwood, who was injured, went home ahead of the main party. He told me he realised he was to be made the scapegoat when he arrived in London to be confronted by a mob of journalists without any help from the M.C.C., who left him to his own devices. Before reaching London, after his ship docked in France, Larwood had been joined by his Nottinghamshire captain, A.W. Carr, whom he took to be his official escort. Carr quizzed him about events in Australia which Larwood answered candidly as he would to his skipper. It was only when they arrived in London and Harold found himself on his own that he realised Carr had been working for a newspaper.
Harold said he arrived in Nottingham by train in angry mood in the early hours of the morning, to be greeted with a brass band and a hero’s welcome. Ordinary cricket lovers had no time for the political arguments taking place between the governments of Great Britain and Australia. All they cared about was England bringing home the Ashes and, as far as they were concerned, the man who did the job was Harold Larwood. He enjoyed his celebrity for a while and capitalised on it. There was talk of making a movie and he went to Gamages store in London for a week to demonstrate Bodyline bowling to an admiring public. For the week of personal appearances he earned five times more than he was paid for the entire tour of Australia. He told us that the worst moment came when he was asked to apologise for the way he had bowled. He refused. ‘I had nothing to be ashamed about,’ he said. He never played for England again and he had only a few more seasons with Notts. Disenchanted, he bought a shop in Blackpool and didn’t even put his name above the door in case it attracted rubber-neckers.
It was here that Jack Fingleton found him in 1948 and persuaded him to emigrate. Jack, who also worked as a parliamentary reporter and knew his way around the corridors of power, pulled a few strings and arranged that the prime minister of Australia, Ben Chifley, be on hand to greet Harold when he arrived. Mr Chifley was a dinki-di Aussie with an ocker accent. After introducing the two men, Jack left them to have a natter. Ten minutes later, he was joined by the prime minister. ‘He’s a nice bloke but I can’t understand a word he’s saying,’ he said to Jack. Ten minutes later, Larwood appeared. ‘It was nice of the prime minister to see me, but I wish I knew what he was on about,’ said Harold. So Jack Fingleton sometimes interpreted for two men who both thought they were speaking English.
Harold laughed as Jack told the tale. ‘And I still haven’t lost my accent,’ he said. And he hadn’t. ‘Coming to Australia was the best thing that happened to me. I’ve been very happy here. I was signing in at a golf club some time ago and came to the bit where they ask you where you come from and my friend suggested I put Nottingham down in the book. I told him my home was in Sydney and pointed out I had lived in Australia longer than their best fast bowler, Dennis Lillee.’
We lunched together twice more before he became housebound because of his blindness. I called to congratulate him on being awarded the M.B.E. in 1993. I didn’t tell him it was sixty years overdue. Like elephants, the Establishment have long memories and small brains. With Harold gone, only Bradman remains of the key protagonists in the Bodyline story. Neither man has told the whole truth, choosing to keep to themselves what they really thought about each other. In that sense, the story has no ending and both men will be remembered for what we don’t know about them as they will for their deeds on the field of play. Between them, the Boy from Bowral and the Lad from Nuncargate played out a story that will forever interest lovers of cricket and social historians looking for clues about the attitudes and mores of that time.
I was lucky to meet Harold Larwood and treasure the memory. I never saw him bowl, but my father did and Jack Fingleton, too. I think Jack should have the last word. ‘One could tell his art by his run to the wicket. It was a poem of athletic grace, as each muscle gave over to the other with perfect balance and the utmost power. I will never see a greater fast bowler than Larwood, I am sure of that. He was the master.’
Harold Larwood: b Nuncargate, Nottinghamshire, 14 November 1904; d 22 July 1995