On 14 January 1933 a Larwood bouncer felled Australian captain Bill Woodfull over the heart, the crowd nearly came over the fence, and that evening MCC manager Pelham Warner walked into the home dressing room to be told, 'There are two teams out there. One is trying to play cricket, the other is not.' The exchange leaked, the Adelaide Test became the diplomatic flashpoint of Bodyline, and the most famous sentence in Anglo-Australian cricket entered the language.
England, captained by Jardine, had arrived in Australia with a plan built around fast leg theory — short balls aimed at the body with a cordon of leg-side catchers — designed to neutralise Bradman. The first Test at Sydney saw McCabe's 187* defy the tactic; the second at Melbourne saw Australia level the series. Adelaide was billed as the swing match.
Australia had won at Melbourne; Jardine arrived at Adelaide determined to settle Bodyline as a tactic that worked. Woodfull won the toss and chose to bat. England had made 341 in their first innings. By the time Australia batted, the temperatures and the temperatures of the crowd were both already high.
Woodfull, opening, took a Larwood lifter to the chest with England's field still in conventional positions. As he straightened from the blow, captain Douglas Jardine called across to Larwood — within Bradman's hearing — 'Well bowled, Harold.' Jardine then signalled the leg-side cordon into place. Larwood's next over was bowled with eight men on the leg side. The Adelaide crowd, then around 50,000, were on the brink. Mounted police were moved closer to the boundary.
Woodfull batted on, clearly winded, before being bowled by Allen for 22. In the dressing room afterwards Pelham Warner, the avuncular MCC tour manager and a man who had been a friend of Australian cricket for decades, came in to express sympathy. Woodfull, normally one of the calmer captains in the game, looked up and said: 'I don't want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there. One is trying to play cricket, the other is not. The game is too good to be spoilt. It is time some people got out of it.' Warner was reportedly found in tears in his hotel room that evening.
The story should have stayed in the dressing room. It did not. By Monday morning the line was on every front page in Australia and several in England. Who had leaked it became a feud in itself; Woodfull suspected Jack Fingleton (a teammate and a journalist), but later evidence — and Fingleton's own later writing — pointed at Bradman. The 'Adelaide leak' poisoned the Australian dressing room for years.
Two days later, on 16 January, Larwood would fracture wicketkeeper Bert Oldfield's skull. Within 48 hours the Australian Board would cable the MCC accusing England of 'unsportsmanlike' play. The Adelaide Test ran from 13 to 19 January and was won by England by 338 runs; the diplomatic damage took decades longer to repair.
Larwood's lifter strikes Woodfull over the heart, conventional field still set.
Jardine signals the leg-side cordon into place; Bradman within earshot.
Crowd surges; mounted police move to the boundary line.
Woodfull bowled Allen for 22 after 89 minutes of bruised batting.
Warner enters Australian dressing room to express sympathy.
Woodfull's 'two teams' rebuke delivered in front of teammates.
Story leaks Sunday evening; front pages worldwide on Monday.
Two days later Larwood fractures Oldfield's skull (separate incident).
13 Jan 1933
Adelaide Test begins; England bat first.
14 Jan, p.m.
Larwood strikes Woodfull over the heart.
14 Jan, evening
Warner enters dressing room; 'two teams' rebuke.
15 Jan
Story breaks on Australian and English front pages.
16 Jan
Larwood fractures Oldfield's skull (separate ball).
18 Jan
ABCB cables MCC accusing England of 'unsportsmanlike' play.
19 Jan
England win Adelaide by 338 runs.
“I don't want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there. One is trying to play cricket, the other is not. The game is too good to be spoilt. It is time some people got out of it.”
“Well bowled, Harold.”
The Australian Board's cable to the MCC on 18 January, calling Bodyline 'unsportsmanlike,' was a direct consequence of Adelaide. England's reply withdrew nothing and offered to cancel the tour; only intervention from Australian PM Joseph Lyons forced the Board to retract the word 'unsportsmanlike' so the series could continue. Warner's reputation in Australia never recovered; Woodfull's grew enormously.
The leak controversy split the Australian dressing room. Bradman and Fingleton stopped speaking; the silence lasted decades. Wisden's 1934 edition named Bodyline 'a development to be deplored' and the MCC quietly began the process that would, by 1935, make 'direct attack' bowling a Law-of-Cricket offence.
The single most quoted sentence in Ashes history, spoken in private and leaked to the press. Bodyline went from a bowling tactic to a constitutional crisis at Adelaide.
Adelaide is the Bodyline match that most people, asked to name a single image, end up describing — Woodfull doubled over, Jardine's hawkish field setting, Warner shaken in the dressing room. The 'two teams' line is the most quoted piece of cricket dialogue ever spoken outside a bowling crease. It still appears on plaques in the Adelaide Oval and on the spine of every Bodyline book published since.
England
1932-08-12
In August 1932 the MCC selectors confirmed Douglas Jardine as England's captain for the 1932-33 tour of Australia, a decision contested at the highest levels of English cricket and one that — combined with Plum Warner's appointment as tour manager — would set the conditions for the Bodyline series.
England
1934-03-21
On 21 March 1934 Douglas Jardine wrote to The Cricketer that he had 'neither the desire nor the intention' of playing in the upcoming home Ashes series. The announcement, taken as a quiet resignation, removed the architect of Bodyline from the field before Australia returned to England — a precondition Australia's Board had implicitly demanded.
England / Gloucestershire
1937-11-15
In November 1937 Wally Hammond — the leading professional batsman of his era — was accepted by MCC as an amateur, opening the door to the England captaincy he received six months later for the 1938 Ashes. The change crystallised inter-war debates about the amateur-professional divide and the unwritten rule that England's captain be amateur.