Harold Larwood

Harold Larwood

Personal information
Full name	Harold Larwood
Born	14 November 1904(1904-11-14) Nuncargate, Nottinghamshire, England
Died	22 July 1995(1995-07-22) (aged 90) Randwick, New South Wales, Australia
Batting style	Right-handed
Bowling style	Right arm fast
International information
National side	England
Test debut (cap 225)	26 June 1926 v Australia
Last Test	28 February 1933 v Australia
Domestic team information
Years	Team
1924–1938	Nottinghamshire
1936–1937	Europeans (India)
Career statistics
Competition	Test	First-class
Matches	21	361
Runs scored	485	7,290
Batting average	19.40	19.91
100s/50s	0/2	3/25
Top score	98	102 not out
Balls bowled	4,969	58,027
Wickets	78	1,427
Bowling average	28.35	17.51
5 wickets in innings	4	98
10 wickets in match	1	20
Best bowling	6/32	9/41
Catches/stumpings	15/–	234/–
Source: [1], 8 January 2009

Harold Larwood (14 November 1904 – 22 July 1995) was an English cricket player, an extremely accurate fast bowler best known for his key role as the implementer of fast leg theory in the infamous "bodyline" Ashes Test series of 1932–33.

In 2009 Larwood was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.

Early life

Statue of Larwood in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire.

Larwood was born in Nuncargate, Nottinghamshire, to working-class parents. When he was a child, a near-fatal accident prompted his father to make him a primitive bat, and the child took to cricket with great enthusiasm. Leaving school at fourteen to become a labourer in the local coal-mine, he also began to play for the village cricket team, Kirkby Portland.

First class career

In 1922, at the age of 18, Larwood was invited to try playing for Nottinghamshire, where he was offered a professional contract and starred with bat and ball.

Larwood was by this stage a fearsome bowler, claimed by many observers to bowl at speeds well in excess of "90 miles per hour" (145 km/h). Frank Tyson recalled that attempts to measure his speed were highly variable, saying that "Larwood, for instance, was measured by high speed photography at between 90 and 130mph". Such speeds would match him with the fastest of modern fast bowlers, Shane Bond, Shoaib Akhtar, Shaun Tait and Brett Lee. Larwood, moreover, was also very accurate. Such a combination made Larwood the most dangerous fast bowler of his time.

Test career

Larwood bowling

In 1926, he played his first Test match against Australia in the second Test of the series, at Lord's. Taking 2/99 and 1/37, he did not secure a permanent place in the team until the 1928 series, where he took seventeen wickets, including 6/32 in the first innings of the first Test. The arrival of Donald Bradman in the Australian team saw the English cricketing hierarchy scratching their heads to devise a plan to defeat the Australian phenomenon and thus retain the Ashes trophy. Douglas Jardine, the English captain (and, like all England captains of the prewar era, a "gentleman amateur" leading a team partly made up of working-class professionals), determined that Bradman was vulnerable to short-pitched bowling, and adopted "fast leg theory". Larwood was tasked with implementing the plan, and thus the stage was set for the bodyline Test series.

By the end of the series in 1932-33, the MCC Lords celebrated the return of the Ashes back to England, not realising the damage that Larwood's bodyline bowling had caused on the fast pitches of Australia. However, in 1933, bodyline was used during the West Indies tour of England. There the MCC Lords saw for the first time that the "fast leg theory" involved in bodyline bowling was not the same as the tactic known by that innocuous name in English County Cricket. Rather, it was an extremely intimidating, premeditated plan of attack. Concerned about the worsening diplomatic relations between England and Australia as a result of this, the MCC hypocritically reprimanded Larwood and asked him to sign a Letter of Apology to the Australian Cricket Board & Players. Larwood refused on the basis that he, as a professional cricketer, was obliged to follow the directions of his captain, whose responsibility the tactics were. In fact Larwood never played cricket for England again, though he did play county cricket for Nottinghamshire until 1938. That year, he retired on medical advice. As Jardine was never asked to apologise, and Pelham Warner, the tour manager, managed to avoid the blame, Larwood felt he was being made the scapegoat for what had occurred in 1932-33.

Personal life

Larwood's Test career batting graph. The red bars indicate the runs that he scored in an innings, and the blue line indicates the batting average in his last 10 innings. The blue dots indicate innings in which he finished not out.

Larwood married Lois Bird, and had five children.

When he retired from cricket he ran a sweetshop in Blackpool. Fellow cricketer Jack Fingleton persuaded him to emigrate to Australia in 1953; and after he had settled there, he was employed by the Pepsi-Cola Company for many years. Although newsreels announced the arrival of the Englishman in Australia, he lived a quiet life in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. He was awarded an MBE in 1993. His most treasured possession was a small silver ashtray inscribed "To Harold, For The Ashes, From A Grateful Skipper" from Douglas Jardine. Larwood met the England fast bowler Frank Tyson on Christmas Eve 1954, but refused to come to the England dressing room because of the MCC's treatment of him in the 1930s; nevertheless he did say, "When you hear 50,000 Aussies shouting at you, you know you've got 'em worried".

Larwood died at the age of 90, having gone partially blind in his last years. His ashes, along with his wife's, are interred at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Kingsford, New South Wales.

Further reading

• FitzSimons, Peter (2006). Great Australian Sports Champions. Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 0-7322-8517-8. 
• Hamilton, Duncan (2009). Harold Larwood. Quercus Publishing. ISBN 1847249493. 

External links

• Cricinfo Player Profile : Harold Larwood
• Official Harold Larwood Site