MCC Outlaws Bodyline — The 'Direct Attack' Law of 1935

The 1932-33 cables had ended with Australia withdrawing the word 'unsportsmanlike' but with the MCC privately conceding that something would have to change. The 1934 Australian tour of England, played in a notably softer atmosphere, was the test bed.

Through 1933 and 1934 the MCC corresponded with Australian, South African, West Indian and New Zealand boards on a common form of words. The eventual amendment was unanimous across Test-playing nations.

The path from Adelaide to the 1935 Law took three drafts. Immediately after the 1932-33 series the MCC issued a statement deploring 'fast leg theory' but stopped short of legislating. In 1934 — with Australia again touring England — county captains gave informal pledges that they would not deploy Bodyline; both Larwood and Voce were quietly omitted from England Test selection. By the end of that summer it was clear informal pledges were not enough.

In April 1935 the MCC Laws Committee added an instruction giving umpires explicit powers, and a moral responsibility, to intervene if they felt a bowler was deliberately trying to injure the batsman by 'direct attack.' The law did not name Bodyline by name; it did not have to. Every county captain understood what it meant.

The immediate effect was dramatic. Short-pitched bowling all but disappeared from English first-class cricket. County captains who used a single bouncer an over were rebuked at committee level. The bouncer would not return as a routine weapon until the West Indies sides of the 1960s and 70s reset what was acceptable, by which time the wording had been quietly rewritten to allow more discretion.

The 1935 amendment also reshaped who could intervene. Until then, captains and umpires had relied on the 'spirit of cricket' as an unwritten code; now it was written. Umpires, traditionally deferential to amateur captains, were given backbone in print.

“Direct attack bowling is unfair, and it is the duty of the umpires at the bowler's end to intervene.”

“It took a fractured skull and a broken series to get a law that should have been there from the start.”

The 1935 amendment held in practice for almost three decades. Where fast bowling reasserted itself — Lindwall and Miller, then Hall and Griffith, then Lillee and Thomson — administrators hesitated to intervene under the 'direct attack' wording, and a more numerical rule (a maximum of bouncers per over) eventually took over in the 1990s.

For the players caught in the original storm, the law change was a quiet vindication. Larwood, by then retired and bitter, refused to celebrate; Voce returned to Test cricket post-war. Bradman, in his later administrative roles, cited the 1935 amendment as proof that cricket could legislate for safety without losing its character.