Bodyline series

 As the semifinals are ready to begin in this Cricket World Cup campaign in few hours, today it is worth remembering Harold Larwood on his birthday today, his tryst with the famous or rather infamous Bodyline series of 1932-33 nearby 80 years ago. The English bowler of the day, bowling at an estimated blistering speed of 90-100 mph, which was considered very high those days totally decimated his Australian opponents. Today happens to be his 119th birthday.

But more importantly he was accused of bowling bouncers on the leg side targeting the body of the batsmen, especially at his opponent star batsman Sir Donald  Bradman, a thorn on the English side. For the first time in the history of cricket, a new term was coined - "BODYLINE".

Larwood created havoc in the Australian dressing room when he managed to break the skull of one of their batsmen and injuring several others. He was widely blamed for his unsportsmanlike conduct but had no regret, ascribing his action to following the orders of his wily skipper Douglas Jardine, the protagonist of this idea of Bodyline bowling well within the rules of cricket. The captain defended his tactics, proclaiming that he was too well within the rules laid out in cricket those days - a gentleman's game where aggression was an alien notion.

Needless to say England won the series Down Under. But more importantly, it managed to put a spanner into the wheels of Bradman's juggernaut. The famous Australian who till then scored runs at an average of 100 plus, could manage only a 56 for average in that series, quite unlikely of him.

Many from our generation might remember the TV serial based on the same series, aptly named as BODYLINE and shown on DOORDARSHAN, the only TV channel available in India in the year 1987. This controversial strategy adopted by the English captain Jardine was very unpopular, though well within the rules of the game. It was probably the first blotch in the gentleman's game, which until that point was lily white like the flannels worn by the cricketers.

The English team also had an Indian batsman (India was a British colony at that time) named Nawab of Pataudi Sr., an useful cricketer who incidentally scored a century in that series. I starkly remember a scene where Ashok Banthia playing Nawab Pataudi gets emotional in front of his captain Jardine, "Now Sun must be setting in my motherland India" to which his captain responded - "Sun never sets over the British Empire". It was true during that time. Alas, gone are those days of British glory. Ironically it was the same English who initiated Bodyline bowling to curb Bradman, after being battered by the battery of West Indian and Australian fast bowlers introduced the rule to restrict the number of bouncers per over.

Jardine didn't live very long and died of cancer in 1955. Larwood lived longer, dying in 1995. Jardine came to India, did some Tiger hunting and posed himself in pictures taken before a fallen tigers, a fad of the time high and mighty in India. He too died soon. Bradman lived much longer and missed the 100 batting average by a whisker - which he could have easily got but for his meager by his standards average of 56 in that famous BODYLINE series. Almost 100 years since, Cricket has come a long way from its origin England to India to its current epicenter India.