Harold Larwood, the fearsome spearhead of England’s Bodyline attack, died on July 22, 1995. His Wisden obituary revisited one of the most turbulent episodes in cricket history.
Larwood, Harold, MBE, died on July 22, 1995, aged 90.
Harold Larwood was one of the greatest fast bowlers of all time. But this will forever be overshadowed by his role in the cricketing controversy of the century, the Bodyline Affair. It is a dispute that retains its extraordinary potency even though nearly all the participants are now dead. It came close to rupturing cricket; indeed, it might have ruptured relations between Britain and Australia. But it was in the nature of cricket that Larwood should eventually settle happily in Australia, the country whose batsmen he once haunted.
Harold Larwood was a miner’s son from Nuncargate outside Nottingham. He left school at 13; at 14 he was working with the pit ponies at Annesley Colliery near Nottingham and would doubtless have become a miner himself had he not already been showing promise at cricket; at 18 he had a trial at Trent Bridge. This was the classic instance of a county whistling down the nearest coal mine when they wanted a fast bowler.
In 1924, at 19, Larwood was starring in the second XI and making his Nottinghamshire debut; in 1925 he was a first-team regular; in 1926 he was in the England team at Lord’s and, more significantly, the one that regained the Ashes at The Oval. In that match he took six wickets, all front-line batsmen, and consistently troubled everyone with pace and lift from short of a length.
The word was already going around that ‘Lol’ Larwood was the quickest bowler seen in years. In 1927 he came top of the national averages. By 1928 he was in harness with the left-armer Bill Voce and together they would become the world’s most feared pair of opening bowlers.
After retirement, he went into eclipse and was living in Blackpool with his wife and five daughters, running a sweet shop, when he decided to emigrate to Australia. In 1949, he sailed on the Orontes, the ship which had taken him there, more famously, 17 years earlier. Encouraged by a former opponent, Jack Fingleton, and helped by a former Australian prime minister, Ben Chifley, Larwood settled in an obscure Sydney suburb, got a job on the Pepsi-Cola production line, and worked his way up – “not because I was a cricketer but because I could do the job” – to managing the lorry fleet.
It was possible to hear the noise of the Sydney Cricket Ground from his bungalow when the wind was right, and it became a place of pilgrimage for visiting Englishmen with a sense of history; Darren Gough delighted the old man by calling there in 1994-95. By then Larwood was blind, and long before that visitors were baffled by the idea that this shy, stooped, kindly man could ever have terrorised cricket.
There was never a hint of animosity in Australia, and Larwood had no regrets either, although he repented of his old view that Bradman was frightened of him. “I realise now he was working out ways of combating me.” John Major signalled the British Establishment’s forgiveness by awarding him the MBE in 1993. Larwood was most proud of the ashtray given him by Jardine: “To Harold for the Ashes – 1932-33 – From a grateful Skipper.”
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