The plan was hatched at the Piccadilly Hotel in the summer of 1932
‘Bodyline’. Even now, eighty years on, it’s the most emotive word in the history of cricket, guaranteed to anger Australians and embarrass Englishmen.
Bodyline bowling is how England regained the Ashes in the 1932/33 series Down Under, having lost them to Australia two years earlier. In that series Don Bradman had touched greatness, scoring 974 runs in seven innings (including a then record individual score of 334) at an average of 139. Put simply, he had been too good for the English.
A plan was needed, and a plan was found, one that would cut Bradman’s average in half and prompt former Australian captain Warwick Armstrong to describe him as ‘no more than a cocktail cricketer’. The plan was hatched at the Piccadilly Hotel in the summer of 1932, when England captain Douglas Jardine sat down with Nottinghamshire fast bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce to discuss the best way to neutralise Bradman. It was agreed that the only weakness of his that they could detect was a dislike of the short ball, a belief that stemmed from a passage of play in the 1930 Test at the Oval when, after a heavy shower, the wicket was unpredictable and Bradman appeared uncomfortable against the England pacemen.
So the plan was agreed: once in Australia, Larwood, Voce and the other England fast bowlers would bowl short at the Australians, while packing the leg side with fielders waiting for a catch as the batsmen fended off the rising deliveries.
Jardine was sure he’d got the measure of Bradman; he was surer still when the first Test began in Sydney – Bradman was nowhere to be seen. Sick, said the Australians, but Jardine was convinced his nemesis was too scared to face the England bowlers. The tourists won the first Test by ten wickets; Larwood terrorised the Australian batsmen and took ten of their wickets. Only Stan McCabe stood tall, striking a stirringly defiant 187.
Bradman was back for the second Test in Melbourne, part of an Australian team that refused to retaliate with its own theory of short-pitched bowling. By now the local press had stopped calling it ‘Leg-Theory’ and were using the term ‘Bodyline’. Jardine didn’t care what it was called, just as long as it won him the series. But Australia fought back in the second Test, and Bradman, out for a duck in the first innings (to a normal delivery), scored a century in the second innings.
Australia had levelled the series, and Jardine was dumbstruck. Australians were, in his informed opinion, ‘uneducated and an unruly mob’, and he would not countenance defeat. England’s bowling in the third Test at Adelaide was as ferocious as anything ever seen on a cricket ground. Bill Woodfull was hit under his heart by a vicious delivery from Larwood. The Australian staggered around the crease, supporting himself on his bat. The crowd became agitated, police readied themselves for a riot and Jardine turned to Larwood and said coolly: ‘Well bowled, Harold.’
The plan was hatched at the Piccadilly Hotel in the summer of 1932
Woodfull was hit again, and again, but he remained at the crease for an hour and a half before being bowled by Gubby Allen, ironically the only member of the English pace attack who refused to fall into line with Jardine’s tactics. Back in the dressing room, as Woodfull tended to his bruises, he received a visit from Pelham Warner, manager of the England team. Woodfull sent him away with what would become the most famous line of Bodyline: ‘I don’t want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there, one is playing cricket. The other is making no attempt to do so.’
The day after Woodfull was hit, wicketkeeper Bert Oldfield had his skull fractured when he miscued a hook shot off Larwood. It wasn’t a Bodyline ball, but few Australians were in any doubt that Oldfield had been unsettled into playing such a shot. Woodfull rushed out to the pitch to help his blooded teammate, screaming, ‘This isn’t cricket, it’s war!’
Jardine was sure he’d got the measure of Bradman
As the press dubbed Larwood ‘The Killer’, the Australian Board cabled the MCC to tell them that ‘Body-line bowling assumed such proportions as to menace best interests of game… causing intensely bitter feeling between players as well as injury. In our opinion is unsportsmanlike. Unless stopped at once likely to upset friendly relations existing between Australia and England.’
The MCC was outraged, replying that ‘we the Marylebone Club deplore your cable message and deprecate the opinion that there has been unsportsmanlike play’.
Larwood also received a couple of telegrams from the MCC. One read ‘Bravo!’, the other ‘Well bowled, congratulations’.
Backed by the MCC, Jardine ignored Australian protests and continued with Bodyline for the rest of the series, a series that England won by four Tests to one. Jardine rejoiced in diminishing Bradman, who still topped the Australian averages with 396 aggregate runs at an average of 56.57, excellent for most batsmen but mediocre for him. Larwood, who finished the series with thirty-three wickets, dismissed Bradman four times, prompting Warwick Armstrong’s jibe.
Bradman chose not to respond to the taunts, but Larwood did so on his rival’s behalf, writing: ‘That fellow is a very long way from being the “cocktail” cricketer which Warwick Armstrong in a rather uncouth sneer styled him last season… to him, leg-side bumpers would be mere gifts for four as often as any bowler was fool enough, and incompetent enough, to serve them up.’
England returned with the Ashes, but at what price to cricket? It took many years for Australia to entirely forgive the English for what they had done to the good name of the sport, and as a direct consequence of the series a new law was introduced in 1935 permitting umpires to intervene if they believed a bowler was deliberately trying to an injure a batsman. Ultimately, however, it was the cricketers themselves who killed Bodyline by realising it could spell the ruin of cricket. Winning wasn’t that important – unless your name was Jardine.