The Man Who Bowled the Balls

A letter to the Editor of Wisden Cricketers' AlmanackLord's Cricket Ground, St John's Wood Early summer, 2002

Sir,

I had not intended to quarrel with a fellow member of the Marylebone Cricket Club over lunch.Indeed, I had gone to Lord's that afternoon in the hope of enjoying precisely those civilised amenities which our Pavilion, at its best, affords: a little cricket, a little conversation, a modest luncheon, and the agreeable illusion that the world beyond St John's Wood might, for a few hours, be persuaded to conduct itself with comparable decency.

I had reckoned without Mr Henry Ashcombe.

I shall not give his real name. He is a gentleman of established position, considerable means, and opinions which have acquired, through long repetition in congenial company, the peculiar hardness of objects that have never been required to withstand examination. He has been an MCC member for longer than I have, possesses a pleasing collection of old cricket photographs, and speaks of the Laws with the solemnity of a bishop addressing a heresy. He is, moreover, entirely persuaded that the Bodyline controversy of 1932–33 was an unfortunate but necessary episode in which Harold Larwood, though a fine bowler, was hardly the innocent party that his admirers would have us believe.

It was this last proposition which brought our luncheon to an abrupt conclusion.

We had been discussing the Ashes. Mr Ashcombe had observed that the English victory of 1932–33 was a triumph of intelligent captaincy, and that Douglas Jardine, whatever his personal peculiarities, had understood something which the Australians had been reluctant to concede: that cricket is a contest, and that a contest is not won by observing the opponent's comfort.

I replied that I had no objection to discomfort as such. Cricket would be a curiously bloodless business if the batsman were entitled to feel comfortable. But I questioned whether the systematic employment of fast, short-pitched bowling directed at a man's body, supported by a concentrated leg-side field, could be defended merely by observing that the object of the exercise was to get him out.

Mr Ashcombe smiled.

'My dear Monday, the Australians had batsmen. We had bowlers. We used them. They complained. We won. I cannot see what there is to discuss.'

'Then you have saved us a great deal of time,' I replied, 'by announcing that there is nothing to discuss with a man who regards victory as its own justification.'

He laid down his knife.

I have never been particularly fond of quarrelling. It seems to me that a gentleman ought to reserve his anger for matters sufficiently serious to deserve it, and that a man who can disagree without raising his voice has not necessarily surrendered his convictions. But there are occasions when politeness becomes a species of complicity. I had begun to suspect that this was one of them.

'You are being unfair to Jardine,' he said. 'He was the captain. He had a duty to win the series. Bradman was extraordinary. The ordinary methods had failed. Jardine found a method that worked. England recovered the Ashes. That is the history of the matter.'

'No,' I said. 'That is the scorecard. The history is rather more troublesome.'

I asked him whether he recalled the subsequent correspondence between the Australian authorities and the MCC, the anxieties over the future of the tour, the public indignation, and the very real damage inflicted upon the relations between two countries which had hitherto regarded cricket as one of their most agreeable common possessions.

He recalled them, of course. He simply regarded them as unfortunate consequences of Australian sensitivity.

'And yet,' I said, 'when those consequences became inconvenient, it was no longer sufficient to point to the scorecard. Someone had to be made to answer for the affair. It was then that the English establishment discovered the distinction between the captain who devised the policy, the institution which supported the tour, and the professional who delivered the ball.'

'Larwood was not an innocent child,' he said. 'He knew what he was doing.'

'Naturally. He was a fast bowler, not a village curate.'

I must confess that this reply gave me considerable satisfaction. Mr Ashcombe did not share it.

I reminded him that Harold Larwood had not invented Bodyline, had not devised its tactical principles, had not appointed himself captain of England, and had not summoned the MCC to endorse the enterprise. He had been selected to do a professional cricketer's work. Douglas 

Jardine determined the field and the strategy; Larwood bowled the deliveries. The distinction is not difficult to understand, unless one has a particular interest in confusing the man who gives an order with the man who carries it out.

'But Larwood could have refused,' Mr Ashcombe objected.

'Could he? In the abstract, certainly. Any man can refuse an instruction, resign his employment, and discover the cost of possessing a conscience which his superiors do not require. The more pertinent question is whether the MCC, which had supported the tour and enjoyed the fruits of its victory, was entitled afterwards to treat the professional as though the whole affair had originated in his private wickedness.'

He told me that I was sentimental.

I told him that sentimentality was a curious accusation to level against a man who had spent the afternoon defending the moral innocence of an institution.

We were now attracting the attention of a gentleman at the next table, who had the appearance of wishing himself elsewhere. I lowered my voice. There are few things more disagreeable than a public quarrel in a club, and fewer still than a public quarrel in which one is obliged to shout in order to be heard by people who have no intention of listening.

I asked Mr Ashcombe to consider the circumstances of Larwood's career. Here was a man born into a Nottinghamshire mining family, who had risen through extraordinary talent and unremitting labour to represent his country. He possessed the physical gifts required by fast bowling, but also the discipline, accuracy, and courage which distinguish a great bowler from a merely quick one. He had made himself indispensable to England.

He was not a gentleman captain whose position would survive a controversy. He was a professional whose livelihood and reputation depended upon the judgment of those who selected him.

And when the judgment of the establishment changed, the professional discovered that his loyalty was not reciprocated.

'You make him sound like a martyr,' said Mr Ashcombe.

'No,' I replied. 'I make him sound like a man. I leave martyrdom to those who have a better claim upon it.'

I was careful not to pretend that Larwood had been unaware of the danger. He was not some innocent instrument who imagined that a cricket ball travelling at considerable speed towards a man's body was an exercise in pastoral benevolence. He knew the nature of his bowling. He knew that batsmen could be hurt. So did Jardine. So did the MCC. So did every spectator who understood the difference between a full toss and a ball rising towards the head.

The question was never whether Larwood understood that fast bowling could injure a man. The question was whether he alone should bear the moral burden of a tactic conceived, directed, and defended by others.

I asked Mr Ashcombe whether he supposed that Douglas Jardine had been ignorant of the dangers. He answered that Jardine was a hard man, and that a captain had to be hard.

'Then why,' I asked, 'should Larwood be condemned for executing the policy of a hard man, while the hard man himself is remembered principally for his tactical intelligence?'

He began to speak of the captain's responsibilities. I interrupted him, which I regret, although not sufficiently to withdraw the interruption.

'Precisely. The captain's responsibilities! I have been endeavouring to discover where you propose to place them.'

I have no desire to make Jardine a monster. He was a complex man, and it is easy, with seventy years of hindsight, to turn him into a villain because the name Bodyline has acquired such an unpleasant resonance. He was an able captain who believed he had found a means of defeating an exceptional batsman. There is no reason to doubt that he regarded the recovery of the Ashes as a legitimate and important objective.

But intelligence is not the same as wisdom, and the capacity to devise a successful tactic does not absolve a man from considering its consequences. If Jardine believed that the method was defensible, he ought to have defended it openly, and accepted his share of the responsibility when its dangers became apparent. If the MCC believed that the method was defensible, it ought to have stood by its judgment rather than allowing the controversy to descend upon a professional bowler whose position was incomparably weaker than that of the gentlemen who had approved the enterprise.

Instead, the story acquired a peculiar convenience. England had won the Ashes; the tactic had achieved its purpose; the diplomatic consequences were unwelcome; and Harold Larwood became the figure upon whom a substantial portion of the blame could be deposited.I told Mr Ashcombe that I found this arrangement morally repugnant.

He replied that Larwood had been asked to apologise and had refused.

'And what,' I asked, 'was he expected to apologise for?'

'For the affair.'

'An affair is not a sin, sir. It is a circumstance. One may apologise for a particular act, for an injury deliberately inflicted, for an insult, for a wrong. But an apology for an entire controversy is often little more than a demand that somebody of insufficient influence should accept responsibility for the embarrassment of his superiors.'

Larwood maintained that he had followed his captain's instructions and had not deliberately sought to injure anyone. He would not provide the sort of apology demanded of him, and his international career came to an end. He never played another Test for England.

I do not suggest that his refusal was necessarily the wisest course available to him. A man may possess a just grievance and still make a mistake in the manner in which he defends it. But we ought to be cautious before condemning a man for refusing to confess to a moral offence which he does not believe himself to have committed.

There is a distinction between contrition and submission. The former acknowledges a wrong; the latter may merely acknowledge that somebody else possesses the power to make one's life uncomfortable.

I rather suspect that the establishment wished for the second while congratulating itself upon having obtained the first.

Mr Ashcombe's expression had now become distinctly cold.

'You cannot seriously suggest,' he said, 'that the MCC persecuted Larwood.'

'I suggest that it failed him.'

'That is an exaggerated distinction.'

'On the contrary. Persecution would imply a deliberate campaign of hostility. Failure requires no such intention. An institution can fail a man through cowardice, self-interest, misplaced loyalty, or the simple desire to have an awkward matter settled without disturbing its own peace.'

I looked around the Pavilion as I spoke. There is something wonderfully reassuring about Lord's. 

The old portraits, the familiar rooms, the quiet movement of members, the accumulated weight of cricketing history: all contribute to the impression that one is participating in a tradition more durable than the quarrels of individual men.

But traditions are not preserved by pretending that their custodians are incapable of wrongdoing. If anything, the older and more honourable an institution claims to be, the more exacting ought to be its examination of itself.

The MCC was not merely an innocent observer. It was the institution responsible for English cricket, and its support for the tour gave the English enterprise a standing which Larwood, by himself, could never have commanded. When the consequences became serious, the club's obligations did not disappear. If it had supported the general policy, it shared responsibility for the policy's consequences. If it had doubts about the method, it had a duty to express those doubts before a diplomatic crisis made them unavoidable.

It could not honourably enjoy the victory and then disown the means by which it had been obtained.

Mr Ashcombe said that this was easy to say in 2002.

'Indeed,' I replied. 'It is easier still in 2002 to pretend that the passage of seventy years has made the question disappear.'

I reminded him that Larwood eventually emigrated to Australia in 1950, settling there with his family. The country in which he had once been treated as the principal instrument of an unwelcome English strategy became his home. The irony is difficult to improve upon. Australia, which had suffered from his bowling, eventually offered him a life beyond the controversy; England, which had benefited from his service, did not restore him to its Test side.

I do not wish to romanticise his emigration. Men move countries for many reasons, and I have no right to claim that Larwood regarded Australia as a moral verdict upon England. But the fact remains that a man who had served his country with exceptional distinction found his international career closed to him, while the broader cricketing establishment continued its existence with considerably less personal inconvenience.

There is, I think, a lesson here which extends beyond cricket. Institutions are often enthusiastic about collective responsibility when a policy succeeds and remarkably particular about individual responsibility when it fails. The honours are distributed widely; the blame is distributed selectively.

And the selection is rarely made without regard to social position.

Had Larwood been a gentleman of independent means, with the security to retire from cricket and the connections to defend his reputation in the press, I wonder whether the story would have unfolded in quite the same fashion. He might have spoken more freely, resisted more effectively, and survived the displeasure of the authorities without sacrificing the remainder of his career.

But he was a professional. He had a family to support, a trade to practise, and a reputation upon which his future depended. His talents had raised him into the company of gentlemen without removing the inequalities which separated their positions.

It is one of the more persistent hypocrisies of British life that we admire the working man who possesses the courage to serve his betters, but become less comfortable with him when he asks them to accept responsibility for the consequences of his service.

Mr Ashcombe had heard enough.

'You seem determined to make this an indictment of the MCC,' he said.

'Not of the MCC as such,' I replied. 'Of the MCC when it failed to live up to its own standards. There is a difference, and I should have thought a member of this club would be anxious to preserve it.'

He pushed his chair back.

'I believe you are confusing cricket with politics.'

'And I believe you are confusing cricket with the scorecard.'

For a moment, neither of us spoke. The sounds of the Pavilion resumed around us: the quiet clatter of crockery, the muted conversation of members, the distant, familiar rhythm of a ball meeting a bat. Outside, the ground lay in that peculiar light which makes Lord's seem less like a sporting venue than a repository of English memory.

I felt no triumph. Indeed, I was rather sorry that our conversation had ended so badly. Mr Ashcombe was not a wicked man, and I have no doubt that he regards himself as a defender of cricket's traditions. But a tradition defended without honesty becomes merely a convenient arrangement by which the present generation congratulates itself upon the virtues of the past.

I rose, gathered my belongings, and retrieved my Panama hat.

Before leaving, I told him one final thing.

'I do not ask you to admire Bodyline, nor to condemn every man who bowled it. I ask only that you distinguish between the man who devised the tactic, the institution which supported the tour, and the professional who carried out the instructions. If you believe that the method was wrong, then condemn it. If you believe that it was right, defend it. But do not tell me that it was right when England won, wrong when Australia protested, and principally the fault of Harold Larwood when the gentlemen required an answer.'

He made no reply.

I left the Pavilion and walked for a little while beside the ground. I thought of Larwood, not as the demon of Australian newspaper caricature, nor as the saint of English retrospective sentiment, but as a working man who had bowled extraordinarily well and had paid an extraordinary price for doing so.

I thought, too, of the batsmen who had faced him. Their injuries were real; their apprehension was understandable; and their protest deserved to be heard. To defend Larwood does not require us to deny the suffering of Woodfull, Oldfield, or any other batsman who endured the consequences of Bodyline. Indeed, the point is precisely that the danger was real enough to require responsibility from everyone who chose to employ the method.

There is no honour in pretending that a man was never hurt. Nor is there honour in pretending that the man who delivered the ball was the only person who ought to have considered the risk.The laws of cricket have always required interpretation, and the spirit of the game has never been reducible to a paragraph in a rulebook. A captain must think of victory, certainly; a bowler must strive to take wickets; a batsman must defend his wicket. But none of these obligations exists in isolation from the obligations of sportsmanship.

I have always believed that cricket is one of the few remaining institutions in which a man may learn that restraint is not weakness, that an opponent is not an enemy, and that victory, however desirable, does not settle every moral question.

Bodyline remains a warning against the assumption that whatever can be done ought to be done, and against the still more convenient assumption that, when the consequences prove embarrassing, the blame may be assigned to the person least able to resist it.

The MCC backed the English tour. England won the Ashes. The tactic achieved its purpose. Yet the subsequent damage to Anglo-Australian cricket relations made it necessary to find a way out of the controversy, and Larwood became one of the men who bore its cost.

I cannot alter the past, nor would I presume to pronounce the final judgment upon every participant in it. But I can refuse to accept the comfortable version in which the institution emerges respectable, the captain remains an ingenious strategist, and the professional bowler is left to answer for the whole affair.

If cricket is to remain a game of honour, then its history must be honest enough to acknowledge not only the men who scored the runs and took the wickets, but also those who were made to pay for the decisions of others.

Harold Larwood bowled the balls. He did not conduct the tour, govern the MCC, or determine the terms upon which England would explain itself to Australia. To remember him without remembering those distinctions is not merely unjust to the man. It is to misunderstand the very game whose traditions we claim to defend.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

Timothy Monday 

A Member of the Honourable MCC

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