The Bodyline Hypocrisy

Conversations with Harold Larwood

Michael Arnold

• Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• eBook ISBN:
  9781909178908
• Year: 2013

This fresh analysis of the England–Australia "Bodyline Controversy" of 1932-33 uncovers hypocrisy on both sides of the furore, drawing on exclusive interviews with English "villain of the piece" (and Australian émigré) Harold Larwood. At the time, Australia was a young, isolated country where sport was a religion, winning essential, and the media prone to distortion. In England, the MCC was pressurised by a British government fearing trade repercussions, leaving Harold Larwood and Douglas Jardine to be hung out to dry on a clothes-line of political expediency. The Bodyline Hypocrisy analyzes the influence of Australian culture on events, and on exaggerations and distortions previously accepted as fact. It reveals that the MCC granted Honorary Membership to Larwood in 1949, influenced by its Australian president. And now even Ian Chappell has stated that Jardine's leg-theory tactic was simply playing Test cricket with whatever weapons were available. Times change and the truth emerges.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Harold Larwood
• Australia – the Culture
• Australia and Sport
• 1932/33 – Betting and Beer?
• The Australian Media
• Leg-Theory – Was It So Impossible?
• 1932/33 Australian Test Selections and Resources
• Douglas Jardine – The Myths and the Man
• Wyatt and Allen
• Test Captains – England and Amateur Control
• Test Captains – Jardine and the Australians
• Timing of the Australian Complaint
• The Demanded Apology
• Banning of Leg-Theory
• Implications, Inferences, Conclusions?
• Appendices: Scores and Averages
• Field placing analysis
• Bibliography
• About the author
• Photographs