Geoff Griffin, the South African fast bowler, remains the only player to have taken a hat-trick in a Test at Lord’s; his international career, however, was extinguished during that same match in June 1960, when he was no-balled eleven times for throwing. This was a climactic incident in a controversy which has haunted cricket since overarm bowling was legalised in 1864. It is easy enough to pronounce that the elbow joint should not be straightened in the delivery of the ball; far harder to decide with certainty when this rule has been infringed.
South Africa were undeniably taking a chance in including among their side in 1960 a bowler who had been no-balled for throwing the previous winter, when playing for Natal. In May 1960, playing against M.C.C. at Lord’s, Griffin was called for throwing on eight occasions, the first time this had happened to a touring player; and soon afterwards his action was again penalised in a match against Nottinghamshire. A three-day session in the nets under the expert tuition of Alf Gover seemed to have helped, but at the cost of rendering Griffin less effective as a strike force. Even so, he took four wickets in the first Test at Edgbaston (during which he celebrated his twenty-first birthday), apparently without offending the umpires. Nevertheless, eyebrows were raised when he strained for more pace at the end of the first day, and a week later he was once more called for throwing in the South Africans’ match against Hampshire.
In the second Test at Lord’s Griffin’s troubles began in the third over, when he was no-balled by umpire Frank Lee, at square leg. Though he soon claimed the wicket of Colin Cowdrey, he received four more calls for throwing that day. Some spectators were puzzled because they could scarcely discern any difference in his action between one ball and another: the feeling was that either all, or none, of his deliveries should have been called. On the second day Griffin was given the new ball after lunch, and no-balled on his fifth and sixth deliveries, again by Lee from square leg. Lee allowed the next delivery; this time, though, Griffin was called for dragging by Syd Buller at the bowler’s end. Remarkably, he kept up his spirits, and maintained considerable hostility. Towards the end of the day he had M.J.K. Smith caught behind off the last ball of an over, and then bowled Peter Walker and Fred Trueman with the first two balls of the next over. It was the first hat-trick claimed by South Africa in Test cricket.
South Africa were twice dismissed cheaply, and lost by an innings shortly after lunch on the fourth day. Since the Queen was due to visit Lord’s at tea-time, an exhibition match was arranged to fill in the time. Though Griffin bowled at half-pace, he was again judged to be throwing, this time by Buller at square leg. Cruelly, when he switched to underarm in order to finish the over, he was no-balled by Lee for not informing him of his change of action. Afterwards, Griffin remembered, Don Bradman appeared in the South Africans’ dressing room to commiserate, and told him that the umpires were acting under orders from Gubby Allen.
Far from clarifying the matter, modern technology – capable of 1,000 frames per second – has merely established that pretty well every bowler flexes his arm in the act of delivery. So in 2005 it was decreed that fifteen degrees of elbow bend should be allowed. Who knows what the cameras might have decided in the case of Griffin, who had suffered an accident at school which left him with a permanent crook in the right elbow, and an incapacity to straighten his arm?
After the Lord’s Test in 1960, Griffin did not bowl again on tour, though he played as a batsman, making some useful scores at number nine. He won universal praise for the calm, philosophical manner with which he confronted misfortune. He played for Rhodesia in 1961–62 and 1962–63, but the experience of being repeatedly no-balled in a match against North-Eastern Transvaal in Salisbury finished him off as a first-class cricketer, aged just twenty-three. Employed by South African Breweries in his cricketing heyday, he subsequently became a hotel manager for them, first at the Argyll, and then at the Congela Hotel in Durban. His crooked right arm continued to be a liability. When he challenged some visitors to his hotel to arm-wrestling, his very first opponent broke his arm.
Geoffrey Merton Griffin: b Greytown, Natal, 12 June 1939; d 16 November 2006