#bodyline

10 incidents tagged

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

MCC / global

1935-04-01

Two and a half years after Adelaide, the MCC formally amended the Laws of Cricket to give umpires the power to stop bowling that constituted a 'direct attack' on the batsman. The 1935 amendment was the legal full stop on Bodyline. Fast leg theory, until then merely 'against the spirit of the game,' became something an umpire could call dead and intervene against. Bouncers became a rationed weapon for the next two generations.

#bodyline#laws-of-cricket#mcc

⭐Serious

Eddie Paynter Leaves Hospital Bed to Score 83 — Brisbane, 1933

Australia v England

1933-02-14

With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.

#bodyline#ashes#1933

🔥Explosive

Adelaide Test 1933 — Woodfull, Warner and the 'Two Teams' Line

Australia v England

1933-01-14

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.

#bodyline#adelaide#1933

🔥Explosive

Bert Oldfield's Skull Fractured by Larwood — Adelaide, 1933

Australia v England

1933-01-16

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.

#bodyline#oldfield#larwood

🔥Explosive

The Bodyline Cables — ABCB and MCC at Diplomatic Breaking Point, 1933

Australia v England

1933-01-18

On 18 January 1933, two days after Bert Oldfield's skull was fractured in Adelaide, the Australian Board of Control cabled Lord's accusing England of 'unsportsmanlike' play. The MCC's reply offered to cancel the tour outright. Two more cables, the intervention of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons and a quiet retraction of the offending word were needed to keep the series alive. It is the most consequential cable exchange in cricket history.

#bodyline#diplomacy#abcb

🔥Serious

Harold Larwood's Last Test — A 98 With a Broken Foot, 1933

Australia v England

1933-02-23

In the fifth Test at Sydney in February 1933, Harold Larwood broke two bones in his left foot bowling Bodyline at top pace — and Douglas Jardine kept him on the field, refusing to let him leave until Don Bradman was dismissed. Hobbling, Larwood went out to bat at No. 4 and made 98. He never played another Test. The Bodyline tour's spearhead was effectively retired by the captain who had unleashed him.

#larwood#bodyline#1933

⭐Serious

Larwood's 33 Wickets — The Bodyline Series Tally, 1932-33

Australia v England

1933-02-28

Across the five Tests of the Bodyline series in 1932-33, Harold Larwood took 33 wickets at 19.51 — still the highest haul by an English fast bowler in an Ashes series in Australia. Including his unlikely 98 with the bat in his last Test, Larwood's tour was statistically the most dominant by a touring fast bowler since SF Barnes a quarter-century earlier.

#larwood#bodyline#1932-33

⭐Moderate

Bill Bowes — From Bodyline to Bradman's First-Ball Dismissal

Australia v England

1933-01-02

On 30 December 1932 at the MCG, Yorkshire's tall fast-medium bowler Bill Bowes, picked for England's Bodyline tour as Larwood's lieutenant, bowled Don Bradman first ball — a long hop that Bradman dragged on attempting to pull. Bowes finished with 1/50 in the innings; the first-ball duck is one of only seven in Bradman's Test career and has been retold in every history of the 1930s ever since.

#bill-bowes#bodyline#1932-33

🔥Explosive

The Bodyline Series

Australia vs England

2 December 1932

The 1932-33 Bodyline series: England captain Douglas Jardine directed Harold Larwood to bowl short-pitched leg-theory at batsmen's bodies to stop Don Bradman. Nearly caused a diplomatic rupture between England and Australia; England won 4-1.

#bodyline#bodyline series#bodyline cricket

⭐Serious

Stan McCabe's 187* — The Innings That Defied Bodyline, Sydney 1932

Australia v England

1932-12-03

In the first Test of the Bodyline series, with Bradman absent through illness and Australia 3 for 82, the 22-year-old Stan McCabe took on Larwood and Voce's leg-theory and counter-attacked his way to 187 not out off 233 balls. The innings included 25 fours and a string of hooks against the line of fire that briefly forced Jardine to drop the Bodyline field. Australia still lost the Test by ten wickets, but McCabe's century stands as one of the great acts of physical and moral courage in Test cricket.

#stan-mccabe#bodyline#ashes