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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/RemnantEvil on 2025-03-15 07:47:39+00:00.
The year is 1932. Cricket’s still in its infancy as a sport – earlier in the year, India became only the sixth nation to be granted Test status. The limited-overs formats of One Day International and T20 International are but tickles in the testicles of Test cricket, decades from inseminating the sport. The greatest contest of cricket is underway, and it’s about to take a violent turn.
First, some background.
The Ashes are, at this time and still today, the definitive rivalry of the sport, fought between Australia and England. The burly, sunburnt convicts of the colony against the upright gentry of the mother country. In 1882, after Australia defeated England at Kennington Oval in London, English journalist Reginald Shirley Brooks wrote in the Sporting Times:
In Affectionate Remembrance of English Cricket which died at the Oval on 29th August, 1882, Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances. R.I.P. N.B.—The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.
A tiny urn, said to contain the burned remains of a bail (the two small bits of wood that sit horizontal on a wicket), became the vaunted prize contested by the two sides. Worth remembering that Australia only technically became a federation in 1901, so the original 1882 team was a “united Australia” squad. Since then, the series has been played with alternating hosts, every couple of years – the last was mid-2023 in England, then next will be in Australia at the end of 2025 – with the trophy going back and forth. Though the series hasn’t always consistently been five matches, the fact has always remained that one side needs to win to take the Ashes, and a tie will result in the current holder retaining the trophy.
In 1930, Australia goes to England with an inexperienced squad, but one name that would come to strike fear into the hearts of English cricketers: Sir Donald Bradman. I’ve waxed lyrical about this man before, but he’s as close as Australia gets to a George Washington figure – the Royal Navy named a ship after him while he was alive, he had a museum dedicated to him, he was the first living Australian to be featured on an Australian postage stamp, and the government produced a 20-cent coin to commemorate him after his death.
There were two pages in my high school history textbook dedicated to Don Bradman and Bodyline. In the national mythos, you would almost believe that a great cricket team and Don Bradman got the country through the Great Depression. You might almost be correct, too.
Prior to going to England for the Ashes, Bradman’s career was only just beginning. He would, in quick succession, put himself in the history books: His first and only ever run-out (when the batters are scoring by running to opposite ends, a fielder that uses the ball to remove the bails from the wicket has “run out” whichever batter is closest to the end at which the wicket is broken); losing by the largest margin of defeat in a Test match, 675 runs (a record which still stands); and the highest score in a first-class innings (when he played for New South Wales against Queensland, scoring 452 not-out – still the third-highest score to this day).
Though Bradman would contribute some runs in the series against England in 1928-29, it was in 1930 that he really shone. Over five matches, Bradman score 974 runs at an average of 139, which remains a world record to this day - the next most runs in a series by a single batter is 905, and even that was over nine innings compared to Bradman’s mere seven innings of batting. In fact, if you look at the top 50 scores set in a series, Bradman appears six times in that 50. Two of those series occurred in the late ‘40s, after Bradman – and every other cricketer – had to take a brief hiatus from the sport due to, you know, the Second World War.
In that ’30 series, the top two English run scorers put together totals of 436 and 416 runs, which – for those good with numbers – is not as many as Bradman even when you put them together. Australia’s captain at the time, Bill Woodfull, very correctly asserted that having Bradman in the side was like having three extra batters.
How do we stop him?
English weather once again scuppered some matches in the 1930 series, which meant that only two Australian victories were enough to snatch the Ashes away from the team favoured to win. The English would get their opportunity to try and claim the Ashes in 1932, when they toured Australia, but they were facing a hell of a dilemma: How do you win when the other side has a man who would end up being the greatest cricketer to ever live, in his prime?
Here, we meet our villain: Douglas Jardine. (In the miniseries Bodyline, which is available on YouTube, he’s played very ably by Hugo Weaving – just if you want a mental image of the man. By the way, it’s pronounced jar-deen.)
If you had to write a bad guy in a cricket story, you could do no better. Abrupt, standoffish, Jardine kept apart from the rest of the England team on the way to Australia – this is when they had to go by boat, which wasn’t a short trip. He alienated the press by being uncooperative, the press retaliated with negative stories, and the crowds at the matches turned on Jardine, which angered him further. Truly a cycle that builds for a positive spirit to the game.
The weapons Jardine brought to the 1932 Ashes: His fast bowlers, and leg theory.
Leg theory was not new. What you do with it, it’s quite simple: Place your fielders on the leg side, which is behind the batter’s back, then bowl towards that side. The batter is then forced to play the bat in close to his body, making run-scoring difficult; combined with extra fielders on the leg side, you have better chances of a catch. It really hits them from four angles. If the line is good, the batter risks a leg-before-wicket (LBW). If the batter moves, they risk leaving their stumps exposed. If the batter tries to play, they risk a nick to the fielder. And, failing any of that, it stifles their ability to score.
What was new was the pace that the English were using. They weren’t just bowling leg theory, they were bowling aggressive leg theory, and this is what made Bodyline different – they were seemingly not targeting the line of leg stump, they were targeting the line of the batter’s body; hence, bodyline.
Jardine called it “fast leg theory”.
If you’ve never touched a cricket ball, you might not understand. Though they get softer throughout the course of the game, a cricket ball is hard. If you ever see people playing cricket not wearing uniforms, you can almost guarantee they will be using a tennis ball because it’s a lot more enjoyable. In the ‘30s, cricketers wore caps. They had leg pads and gloves, sure, but fewer of the protective measures we have today.
In November 2014, 25-year-old Phil Hughes is playing in a state cricket match between South Australia and New South Wales. A bouncer – which is a delivery that drops short from the bowler and will therefore regain height to be high on the batter – strikes Hughes beneath his left ear when he mistimes a hit. Though he was wearing a helmet, the blow knocks him down. He staggers, then falls. He never gets back up.
You could count on two hands the number of deaths that have occurred in cricket in the last 50 years. Despite using a round rock for a primary piece of equipment, it’s a safe sport – most of the deaths in cricket are really just deaths that occurred incidental to what the person was doing at the time. There are injuries, sure – fast bowlers in particular are like thoroughbred horses in that they are really damaging their legs, feet and back the more they play. Though efforts were made to re-evaluate the design of the cricket helmet, ultimately it was determined that the death of Phil Hughes was a freak accident, and that nothing could be done to the helmet that would have prevented his death.
In 1932, they did not have helmets.
In order to exploit what they perceived as Bradman’s one weakness – fast bowling directed at him – the English adopted Bodyline.
Bradman missed the first Test, but the crowd saw it. Led by pace bowler Harold Larwood, who would claim ten wickets in the match, the English intermittently employed Bodyline. Only one Australian, Stan McCabe, put up a solid fight to score 187 runs, adapting rapidly to the bowling by using hook and pull shots – techniques where the bat is swing across the body at about shoulder height. An interesting piece of trivia is that an Indian prince played for the English side. He scored a century on his debut, but would be dropped after the second Test due to his refusal to participate in the Bodyline tactic; as a fielder, he was instructed to move to a leg-side fielding position and he refused.
Bradman returned for the second Test, and though he was out for a golden duck in the first innings, he contributed 103 not-out in the second. Together with a strong performance by the Australian bowlers, they managed to win by 111 runs.
It would be their only victory in the series.
The Third Test was the one that came to encapsulate the Bodyline series. Australian captain Bill Woodfull copped a blow to the chest, but he soldiered on to score 73 runs. As Woodfull’s clutching his chest, bent over in pain, Jardine calls out to Larwood, “Well bowled, Harold!” Though it was allegedly meant to unnerve Bradman at the non-striker’s e...
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