The Bodyline Hypocrisy by Michael Arnold

Author:Michael Arnold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cricket, england, ashes, bodyline, australia england, harold larwood
Publisher: Pitch Publishing (Brighton) Ltd
Published: 2013-04-09T16:00:00+00:00

Douglas Jardine – The Myths and the Man

“Jardine’s tenacity, courage and tactical skill have rarely been equalled by any touring captain.”

Walter Hammond, 1946

“I have never played under a better tactician than DR Jardine. He takes a lot of knowing. He stays within his shell and in doing so creates, I’m afraid, a wrong impression. But I learned differently in 1932/33. Then I learned that Jardine was one of the greatest men I have met.”

Herbert Sutcliffe, 1935

DOUGLAS JARDINE was born in 1900 in Bombay, where his father, Malcolm, was a barrister, a profession he had followed on there from his own father, WJ Jardine. The Jardine family were steeped in cricket, Malcolm having been in the university team at Oxford and had scored 140 in the varsity match of 1892 and three of his brothers had been in the Rugby school cricket team. In India the family was comfortably off, but not wealthy. Douglas was sent to Norris Hill Preparatory School, near Newbury, in 1910, and then went on to Winchester in 1914, where he captained the first XI in his final year, with a batting average of 66. In 1919 he went up to Oxford, where he was awarded a cricket Blue and was reasonably successful, without being exceptional, in his four years there. He was not made captain in his final year, but this was partly due to sustaining a serious injury to his right knee that subsequently constrained his batting and prevented him from bowling his leg-breaks. He was also a contemporary at Oxford of Greville Stevens, an all-rounder of outstanding ability.

On coming down from Oxford, Jardine played for Surrey as an amateur while qualifying as a solicitor and was made vice-captain to Percy Fender in 1924. Thereafter he played regularly for Surrey, with the exceptions of the 1929 and 1930 seasons when, for business reasons, he could manage only nine matches. In most of the other seasons, he was usually either at the top or well up in the County Championship batting averages.

In 1928 Jardine was selected for two of the Test matches against the West Indies, averaging 52.50, and in 1928/29 was a member of Percy Chapman’s Ashes side to Australia, where he played in all five Test matches, emerging with a batting average of 42.60. It was on this tour, and apparently solely because of his appearance, that Jardine came under fire from Australian barrackers although the reason for this has never been logically explained.

Previous books on the 1932/33 tour appear to have concentrated on depicting Jardine as a difficult man, as an aloof and autocratic snob but in just about every quoted instance there is no alternative opinion or interpretation offered. Incidents, situations and statements seem to have been taken at face value, or without any attempt being made to enquire whether any other reason existed. In fact, since his death in 1958, it appears to have become popular to criticise and find fault with Jardine, without stopping to consider the possibility of other factors being involved.

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