“Your team can certainly take the field with the knowledge and with the full assurance that cricket will be played here in the same spirit as in the past and with the single desire to promote the best interests of the game in both countries.
“The Committee much appreciate your promise to take the question of barracking into consideration with a view to ensuring that it shall be kept within reasonable bounds.
“Your team can rely on a warm welcome from M.C.C., and every effort will be made to make their visit enjoyable.”
From Australian Board of Control to M.C.C., Nov. 16, 1933.
“We appreciate the terms of your cablegram of October 9 and assume that such cable is intended to give the assurance asked for in our cablegram of September 22.
“It is on this understanding that we are sending a team in 1934.”
A joint meeting of the Advisory County Cricket Committee and the Board of Control of Test Matches at Home, at which the county captains were present, was held at Lord’s on Thursday, November 23, 1933, to consider the replies received from the counties to the M.C.C.’s circular letter in regard to fast leg-theory bowling.
A decision was reached that no alteration of the Law was desirable. It was agreed that any form of bowling which is obviously a direct attack by the bowler upon the batsman would be an offence against the spirit of the game.
It was decided to leave the matter to the captains in complete confidence that they would not permit or countenance bowling of such type.
From M.C.C. to Australian Board of Control, Dec. 12, 1933.
“Reference your cable of November 16th, you must please accept our cable of October 9th, which speaks for itself, as final.
“We cannot go beyond the assurance therein given. We shall welcome Australian cricketers who come to play cricket with us next year. If, however, your Board of Control decide that such games should be deferred, we shall regret their decision.
“Please let us know your Board’s final decision as soon as possible and in any event before the end of the year.”
From Australian Board of Control to M.C.C., Dec. 14, 1933.
“With further reference to your cable of October 9 and your confirmatory cable of December 12 in reply to ours of November 16, we, too, now regard the position finalised. Our team will leave Australia on March 9.”
From M.C.C. to Australian Board of Control, Dec. 14, 1933.
“Thank you for your cable. We are very glad to know we may look forward to welcoming the Australians next summer. We shall do all in our power to make their visit enjoyable.”
From Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, 1934
BY THE EDITOR OF WISDEN CRICKETERS’ ALMANACK
Sydney J. Southerton
Had the foregoing cables been the medical history sheets of a person suddenly afflicted by some mental or physical trouble a doctor would have experienced little difficulty in tracing and analysing the disease from its onset to its cure. In like manner cricketers can gather from the cables almost the whole course of the disturbance brought about between the M.C.C. and the Australian Board of Control over the question of fast leg-theory bowling. I have purposely omitted to use the expression “body-line bowling.” It may have conveyed to those to whom it was presented at the outset the meaning the inventor of it wished to infer, but to my mind it was an objectionable term, utterly foreign to cricket, and calculated to stir up strife when the obvious aim of everybody should have been directed towards the prevention of any breach.
Happily the controversy is now at an end, and little reason exists, therefore, to flog what we can regard as a “dead horse.” But, obviously from the historical point of view, something on the subject must be said. I hope and believe that the ventilation of their grievances by the Australians, and the placatory replies of the M.C.C. will have done much towards imparting a better spirit to Test Matches which of recent years have become battles rather than pleasurable struggles. A false atmosphere has pervaded them. During the last few tours of M.C.C. teams in Australia, and the visits of the Australians to this country one could not fail to detect a subtle change taking place in the conduct of Test Matches—reflected unfortunately in the style of play of the cricketers themselves. The result of the contests was given a prominence out of keeping even with the importance of Test Matches, and the true sense of perspective stood in danger of disappearing altogether.
There is no need to enter into some of the reasons for the hostility with which D. R. Jardine in particular and certain of his team were received by the huge crowds in Australia. Animosity existed and was fanned into flame largely by the use of the term “body-line” when Larwood and others met with such success against the leading Australian batsmen. To such an extent had real bitterness grown that the storm burst during the Third Test Match at Adelaide. The dispatch of the petulant cablegram by the Australian Board of Control even placed the completion of the tour in jeopardy. Saner counsels prevailed, and, although tension existed for months afterwards, the M.C.C. for their part never lost their grip of the situation and, what was even more important, refused to be stampeded into any panic legislation. Whatever individual opinions were held at the time the M.C.C. Committee, as a whole, naturally stood by the captain of their Team in Australia. They had heard only one side of the question.
And now, what of this fast leg-theory method of bowling to which not only the Australian players themselves, but a vast majority of the people of Australia took such grave exception? With the dictum of the M.C.C. that any form of bowling which constitutes a direct attack by the bowler on the batsman is contrary to the spirit of the game everyone must unquestionably concur. D. R. Jardine, on his return to England, stated definitely in his book that the bowling against which the Australians demurred was not of this description, and Larwood, the chief exponent of it, said with equal directness that he had never intentionally bowled at a man. On the other hand, there are numerous statements by responsible Australians to the effect that the type of bowling adopted was calculated to intimidate batsmen, pitched as the ball was so short as to cause it to fly shoulder and head high and make batsmen, with the leg-side studded with fieldsmen, use the bat as a protection for their bodies or their heads rather than in defence of the wicket or to make a scoring stroke. Victor Richardson, the South Australian batsman, has said that when he took his ordinary stance at the wicket he found the ball coming on to his body; when he took guard slightly more to the leg-side he still had the ball coming at him; and with a still wider guard the ball continued to follow him. I hold no brief either for Jardine or Larwood or for Richardson, Woodfull or Bradman; but while some of the Australians may have exaggerated the supposed danger of this form of bowling I cling to the opinion that they cannot all be wrong. When the first mutterings of the storm were heard many people in this country were inclined to the belief that the Australians, seeing themselves in danger of losing the rubber, were not taking defeat in the proper spirit always expected from honourable opponents. I will confess that I thought they did not relish what seemed to me at that stage to be a continuous good-length bombardment by our fast bowlers on to their leg-stump. This idea I afterwards found was not quite correct.
There is nothing new in leg-theory bowling. The most notable exponent of it in recent years was Root, of Worcestershire; to go back to just before the War A. Jaques, of Hampshire, often exploited it with success; and to delve deeper into the past an Australian—no less than the famous Spofforth himself—would at times bowl on the leg-stump with an off-break and two fieldsmen close in on the leg-side. Root and Jaques were, however, medium-paced bowlers while Spofforth, even if he had a very destructive