Two days after Woodfull was struck over the heart, Australian wicketkeeper-batsman Bert Oldfield top-edged a Harold Larwood lifter into his own temple at Adelaide. The blow fractured his skull. Crucially, the field was conventional — not the leg-theory cordon — but the crowd did not know that. Mounted police lined the boundary as Oldfield was carried off; the Adelaide Test came within a single Australian Board decision of being abandoned.
Adelaide had already been inflamed by Woodfull's injury and the leaked 'two teams' rebuke. Oldfield, 38, was the senior wicketkeeper of the era and a universally liked figure in both dressing rooms.
Australia were chasing 532 to win in the fourth innings — a notional rather than real target. Oldfield came in at the fall of the sixth wicket with the match effectively gone. He was batting fluently when the lifter struck.
Oldfield, batting at 41 in the first innings, hooked at a Larwood ball that lifted more than expected. He misjudged it, the ball glanced off the splice into his right temple, and he collapsed. England's fielders, Larwood among them, ran to him; the bowler was visibly shaken. Oldfield staggered to his feet, said 'It wasn't your fault, Harold,' and was led from the field.
The ball had not been bowled with a Bodyline field. That detail was lost in the immediate uproar. The Adelaide crowd, already inflamed by Woodfull's injury two days earlier and by knowledge of the dressing-room scene with Warner, were on the edge of invading the field. Mounted police drew up in line on the western boundary. Bradman would later write that he genuinely believed there was 'a riot waiting to happen.'
Oldfield had a linear fracture of the frontal bone. He was taken to hospital, did not bat in the second innings, and missed the rest of the series. He returned to Test cricket in 1934 and played until 1937, but the Adelaide injury haunted him; he wore a wider, padded cap thereafter and never hooked the same way again.
Australia's Board cabled the MCC on 18 January. The 'unsportsmanlike' wording was provoked at least as much by Oldfield's skull as by Woodfull's chest. England replied tartly, offering to cancel the tour. Only Prime Minister Joseph Lyons's intervention — coupled with the financial cost of an abandoned series — kept the tour alive.
Oldfield, on 41, top-edges a Larwood short ball.
Ball glances off the splice into his right temple.
Larwood and slips run to him; Oldfield's 'It wasn't your fault, Harold.'
Skull fractured; carried from the field.
Mounted police line the western boundary against the crowd.
Oldfield does not bat second innings; misses rest of series.
Australian Board cables MCC two days later.
16 Jan 1933, p.m.
Larwood lifter strikes Oldfield's temple.
16 Jan, immediately after
Oldfield carried off; police line boundary.
17 Jan
Hospital diagnosis: linear frontal fracture.
18 Jan
ABCB cables MCC accusing England of unsportsmanlike play.
19 Jan
England win Adelaide by 338 runs.
“It wasn't your fault, Harold.”
“I genuinely believed there was a riot waiting to happen.”
Oldfield was hospitalised with a linear fracture of the frontal bone but recovered without lasting neurological damage. He played his next Test in 1934 in England and continued until 1937, finishing with 130 dismissals (the wicketkeeper world record at the time). He always insisted that Larwood was not to blame for the Adelaide ball — though the field setting Jardine deployed for much of the series was, in his words, 'a different conversation altogether.'
For Larwood the moment was a personal grief. He visited Oldfield in hospital and, in his retirement memoir, said it was the worst day of his cricket life. Crowds at later Tests booed him for it for the rest of the tour.
A genuinely accidental blow that, on a Bodyline-saturated wicket, became the iconic image of cricket on the brink. Within 48 hours it had triggered the most serious diplomatic incident in cricket history.
The Oldfield image — wicketkeeper crumpled, bowler distraught — is the most reproduced photograph of Bodyline. It changed Australian helmet culture decades before helmets were available; it directly fed the 1934 informal moratorium and the 1935 Law change against 'direct attack' bowling. Oldfield himself spent the rest of his life playing down the moment, which is partly why it has lasted.
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.