Wyatt and Allen

“Nor do I think there is the smallest doubt that if Australia had had a bowler of the type of Larwood they would have bowled him in the same way we did. It was only common sense.”

Bob Wyatt, 1951

“I have bowled fast at times out here and made the ball fly but never the leg-theory. I have refused to do it. Jardine said I ought to do it which made me furious.”

Gubby Allen, letter to his parents, 1932

THESE TWO members of the team have mostly been portrayed as having been men of integrity who opposed Jardine’s tactics. However research shows there to have been a totally different side in each case and Bob Wyatt’s own published views are quite the opposite of the picture painted by others. Wyatt was Jardine’s deputy on the 1932/33 tour and several authors, Le Quesne and Swanton for instance, have asserted that he was very much against the leg-theory tactic.

However, Wyatt’s own book, Three Straight Sticks, published some 18 years after that tour in 1951, states the very opposite: “The type of bowling employed by Larwood would certainly not have been so successful if used by any other fast bowler. Having so amazingly accurate a bowler as Larwood, I think Jardine was fully justified using him as he did. Certainly I don’t want to shirk my share of the responsibility for the decision the Committee made.”

These are not the views of a leg-theory opponent, but someone who simply sees the tactic as the logical way to employ a bowler of Larwood’s unique ability. However, more tellingly Wyatt went even further in his book, saying: “Nor do I think there is the slightest doubt that if Australia had had a bowler of the type of Larwood they would have used him in the same way we did. It was only common sense.”

It seems remarkable that these views, published by a man who was the vice-captain of the team, not only appear to have been ignored but have actually been deliberately distorted because they do not fit with the story that Jardine was the sole proponent of the leg-theory strategy. However Wyatt’s comments are quite definite and he is not talking about some emotional retaliation but simply of making the best use of the bowling attack at hand. “Retaliation” is the word that has become fashionable when discussing whether Australia could have attempted the same tactic, but as Wyatt makes clear he did not regard this as a matter of petulant tit-for-tat or exacting revenge, it was simply a question of utilising to best effect the resources for the conditions – resources that Australia just did not possess.

When asked about what Wyatt had said in his book, Larwood’s comment was: “I don’t read cricket books. I don’t need to as I have my own memories and knowledge so I don’t know what was written but I can say Mr Jardine frequently consulted Mr Wyatt regarding field placing for leg-theory and the two of them usually seemed to be in agreement.”

Le Quesne in his 1983 book, The Bodyline Controversy, claims that Wyatt “would never have countenanced bodyline” but it seems odd that he should have made this observation in 1983 some 30 years after Wyatt himself had gone to print to state precisely the opposite. The same is true of Swanton in his 1977 book Follow On where he states that Bob Wyatt was “dead against bodyline”. As in the case of Le Quesne, Swanton’s book came out some years after Wyatt’s own book had clearly stated totally different views. Wyatt lived on until 1995 so it seems odd that neither of them, apparently, checked with him before going to print.

In his book Wyatt also made the following observation: “The effect of Larwood lay not so much in the fact that he was bowling the occasional bouncer but in his almost miraculous control of length and direction. Bowling at that speed the bowler has only to make a slight mistake in direction to present an easy target for the batsman. But Larwood was so accurate he gave very little way indeed.

“Voce was also accurate and, although not as fast as Larwood, he bowled with his head. GO Allen never bowled better than on that tour, but he didn’t bowl leg-theory, partly because he didn’t approve of it and partly because he wasn’t as fast as Larwood and would not be able to do it with such accuracy and pace.”

Authors are of course perfectly entitled to their own beliefs and what seems like wishful thoughts to support their own construction of events, but it is more than merely odd when what is written about a person flies directly in the face of what that person has himself already quite clearly written. Le Quesne and Swanton were both clearly attempting to produce a point to support their own views but unfortunately for them their subject had already said quite the opposite.

Wyatt also points out that 19 of Larwood’s 33 Test wickets – nearly 60% – were either bowled or LBW and therefore only a possible 14 could have fallen directly as a result of leg-theory. Voce took 15 wickets and of these six were either bowled or LBW leaving a balance of only nine wickets possibly due to leg-theory. This produces a total between the two bowlers of 23 wickets that might have been due to leg-theory catches. According to Harold Larwood leg-theory was not used for the tail-enders and Swanton says this view is supported by Allen. Thirteen tail-end wickets were taken by either Larwood or Voce and therefore if these wickets are excluded the number of Australian wickets possibly lost to leg-theory falls to a total of ten. Given that a total of 93 Australian wickets fell to bowlers during the series, this figure of ten means that only 11% could have been due to the evils of leg-theory and this figure is a generous one because not all the 20 catches may have been taken when leg-theory was in operation. It might also be noted that at least seven Australian wickets fell so early in an innings that leg-theory could not have been responsible.

A further issue is the “bodyline-would-not-have-occurred-without-Jardine” theory and again this brings in Bob Wyatt who says the first time on that tour that leg-theory was tried was under his captaincy at Melbourne, in a match against an Australian XI when Jardine was away on a fishing trip. Wyatt wrote: “It seemed so successful that the Selection Committee had a long discussion about it afterwards and from it they began to evolve the leg-theory plan, with the intention of defeating Bradman.”

The Selection Committee consisted of Jardine, Wyatt, Sutcliffe, Hammond and Warner and the question that therefore arises is whether the same strategy would in fact have been pursued had Wyatt been captain and not Jardine? From what Wyatt has written it seems highly probable that Jardine or no Jardine, leg-theory would have been employed. Wyatt’s own comments also contradict Swanton’s version that Wyatt and Allen commiserated with each other at the end of each day’s play because of their shared loathing of Jardine’s tactics. Again this seems like wishful thinking because from Wyatt’s own statements it is distinctly unlikely.

Asked about the friendship between Wyatt and Allen, Harold Larwood said it was not surprising. He pointed out that they were both amateurs, at a time when, he said, amateurs tended to stick together, and they were about the same age – in their early thirties. According to Larwood the other two amateurs, Brown and Pataudi, were also frequently in each other’s company, and again this seems to have been logical because they were ex-Oxford or Cambridge and about the same age – roughly ten years younger than Wyatt and Allen. Wyatt was yet another to say that the leg-theory strategy was made far more difficult for the Australian batsmen by the uneven bounce of their own wickets and Allen’s biographer, Swanton, says that Allen made the same observation.

The photograph (page v, picture section) shows a clear example of this. Woodfull is ducking a short ball he believes will rise but it actually strikes him on the back only a fraction above stump height; only a little lower and an LBW appeal might have been made. So there are four members of that side, Wyatt, Allen, Bowes and Larwood, all pointing to the factor of uneven bounce. It might be said that Larwood had some reason to say this but the other three had nothing at all to gain, and as we shall see, especially Allen who had refused to adopt that style of attack.

Allen was the one member of the side who went out of his way to add fuel to the controversy, by publicly refusing to bowl leg-theory and saying that he disagreed with it in principle. Gubby Allen had been born in Sydney but at 30 years of age was fairly old for a fast bowler to be making his first trip to Australia. As an amateur he seems to have been something of a Warner protege and certainly the two families were quite close. He had played sporadically for Middlesex over the previous seven or eight years with fluctuating success and his selection was generally regarded with some surprise. Allen was reasonably fast but at 30 this was hardly the age to be embarking on an arduous tour of a country where the climate can be very hot and the wickets hard and unhelpful so there would seem to have been some inside influence in his selection. But as both Larwood and Wyatt have pointed out, he was neither fast nor accurate enough to have bowled leg-theory with any success, and he probably realised this himself.

However, although claiming he was totally against the strategy, Allen was quite happy to field in Larwood’s leg trap. In fact he took more catches (and some of them quite spectacular) off leg-theory at short leg than any other fielder in the England side and in Larwood’s total Test career Allen took more catches off his bowling than either Chapman, Jardine, Ames or Hammond. Plum Warner, in his book, The Book of Cricket, specifically states: “GO Allen made a great name for himself at short leg.”

It is odd that a man of such high principles disdained from bowling leg-theory but was quite prepared to act as co-executioner when it was bowled by someone else. If Allen was so against leg-theory then why didn’t he insist on fielding at third man, for instance, or cover point? Such positions were quite open to him and would not have compromised his principled sensitivities on the issue. Moreover, although he might not have conceded this, Allen probably benefited from bowling in tandem with Larwood or Voce on a number of occasions for many a wicket has fallen through a batsman unconsciously relaxing or taking risks when at the less hostile end.

Brian Rendell’s 2003 book Gubby Allen – Bad Boy of Bodyline? was written following a detailed study of Allen’s complete letters to his parents while on that tour which are now kept in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. Rendell says he came to the clear conclusion that Allen’s real motives had little to do with any moral misgivings regarding principle but were more concerned with his public image in Australia, the reaction of his relatives there, the worry that he might be damaging the reputation of his family and, moreover, that he did not believe he could bowl leg-theory as well as Larwood and Voce.

This latter interpretation is perhaps reinforced by the discovery that in one of his letters Allen had referred to Larwood and Voce as “swollen headed gutless uneducated miners” and if that was what he thought then he wouldn’t have wanted to provide an unfavourable comparison. When discussing Allen with Harold Larwood in the early 1990s he made the point that more than anyone else in the side Allen always seemed concerned about his image. Harold said he couldn’t actually say why, but it was just an impression he gained. When he made that observation he couldn’t have known what Allen’s letters were to reveal, but his comment does now fall into an interesting perspective.

In another letter Allen said: “Don Bradman made some incredible shots but he is a terrible little coward of fast bowling.” Fear when facing extreme pace is really an uneasy apprehension, and perfectly reasonable, but “coward”? Rendell says he was informed by the Mitchell Library that the letter regarding Bradman had been “restricted” until after Bradman’s death since it was thought better to keep a lid on these views while he was still alive. Bradman had considered Allen to be a close friend and although it is quite possible that Allen was being totally honest in his assessment it would have come as something of a shock for Bradman to have discovered what his friend had been writing about him. He spoke of the rest of the team as “a collection of half-wits” in one letter and in another described Jardine as “an absolute swine”. He would no doubt have been embarrassed had he known that early in 1933 Jardine was to write to his father, Sir Walter Allen, as follows:

Dear Sir Walter
Please excuse great haste and this paper – I have taken refuge here from Press-men and Publishers who made my home pretty trying for my people to live in!
This is just another on Obbie – I don’t think I am betraying any confidence if I give you my report to MCC as far as he is concerned, you know I will not broadcast it.
      GO Allen set a truly magnificent example to the side, knocking off smoking and drinking – an excellent tourer in every way, and one who deserved every atom of success which came his way, and was, in fact unlucky – or so it seemed to me, in not having more success with the bat – a wonderful short leg.
      I can’t say more than that for I mean every word of it – how pleased and justly proud you and Lady Allen must be to have him back. I hope you are both very well. Your family were extraordinarily good to me in Australia.
      In haste, yours sincerely, Douglas R Jardine.

This letter reveals a particularly generous side to Jardine’s character – after all, Allen had been the source of some embarrassing public comments regarding leg-theory and yet Jardine does not appear to have resented this at all. More to the point perhaps, this letter is yet another factor that appears to have been ‘overlooked’ by previous authors, maybe because it didn’t sit comfortably with the image being portrayed.

In his book, Gubby Allen – Man of Cricket, Swanton says that at one point in the tour Allen had threatened Warner that he would report direct to Findlay, MCC secretary, if he was again asked to bowl leg-theory. Whether this was the 1930s public school hierarchy – an Old Etonian not taking orders from a mere Wykehamist – is not clear, but it does indicate a somewhat difficult position for Jardine in that a member of the side of which he was the appointed captain was threatening to go over his head simply because he disliked a tactical point. This scenario has an unhealthy quasi-political tinge to it, in that Allen knew or had been told he could ignore his captain and complain directly to Lord’s. Allen wasn’t even vice-captain but he seems to have been told by someone – Warner? – that he could act quite independently if he so wished, or maybe Warner was quietly encouraging him in this. Certainly Warner does not appear to have discouraged the plan, one where one might have expected a touring side manager to have directed that such an action would be quite improper.

When away from cricket on that tour, Allen was very much on a social whirl involving dinner parties, dances, golf, horse-racing, theatres and so on, and one of his reasons for declining to bowl leg-theory may have been to preserve his popularity in a country where sport was so intertwined at all levels of society; he certainly appears to have been popular in Australian social circles. Although sometimes vitriolic in his criticism of Jardine he was nonetheless apparently quite happy to accept invitations to spend rest days in Jardine’s company and happily mixed with him on a social basis.

Gubby Allen emerges with some ambivalence and some of his actions and statements are strangely ambiguous. He went out of his way to emphasise widely his opposition to the principle of leg-theory and yet happily functioned as one of its most effective assistants. He privately and publicly criticised Douglas Jardine and yet was quite happy to keep company with him socially. All in all, Allen seems to have been a strange collection of contradictions.

Other than Jardine himself Wyatt and Allen were the two leading amateurs in a side that contained five amateurs. It is therefore worth considering the overall position of the amateur in English cricket in the early 1930s.