Born
1900, Bombay, India - Died 1958 Montreux, Switzerland
Played
for: - Oxford University, Surrey and England
 Douglas
Jardine, will forever be linked to Bodyline, for
it was during this season that he had the greatest
effect on Test Cricket history. Not so much for
his batting or bowling feats, but his captaincy
and the decisions he made off and on the field.
The events are well documented, and are still
talked about around cricket grounds in the 21st
Century.
When
war broke out he was among the first to join.
Dropped behind enemy lines he Served his country
with distinction. Son of a Rhaj, he died of cancer
on June 18th, 1958 (Montreux, Switzerland). He
was cremated and his ashes were scattered over
the glens and lochs of Scotland.
Douglas
Robert Jardine was born in Bombay in 1900. The
son of a Scottish lawyer who had gone out to India
six years earlier to practice law - and ended
up as Advocate general of Bombay. Douglas a young
boy was sent to Scotland at the age of nine to
stay with his Aunt Kitty to work his way through
the educational system, then appropriate for a
member of the Scottish upper middle class. Prep
school led to Winchester. Jardine was not particularly
adept intellectually but he was good at sport,
which in turn earned him the respect of his peers.
By the time he went to Oxford University, Jardine
was tall, un-athletic, thin faced and had a sharply
beaked nose.
It
need hardly be said that Jardine's politics were
Conservative - his upbringing in India had seen
to that. On the 1928 - 29 tour of Australia he
had performed well, just missing his century in
the 4th test match, but his habit of wearing a
multi - coloured Harlequins cap and a white silk
'choker' while in the field was a gift to the
Australian barrackers, who accepted it with pleasure!
Jardine never took kindly to such treatment and
from that moment on, Australians (to Jardine)
were known collectively as bastards.
Jardine's
strategy for the tour (1932 - 33), once he had
accepted the Captaincy - about which he had doubts
as it happened, doubts which took some time to
overcome - was very simple. It was to contain
Bradman. Bradman had after all during the 1930
tour of England changed the nature of the game.
He had shown even on soft English wickets that
he could dominate any English bowling attack,
even one containing Larwood, to such an extent
that on even harder Australian wickets he would
be invincible.
Jardine
studied the film records of Bradman batting in
the 1930's; he read accounts of his matches and
discussed Bradman with the players who played
against him. All in all a very professional research
job was done by Jardine, even by modern day standards.
However, according to his daughter it was the
film of Bradman and Archie Jackson at the oval
in the last test of the 1930 series when they
were facing Larwood on a rain - affected wicket,
that put an idea into Jardine's mind. 'I've got
it', he apparently said, 'he's yellow' - referring
to Bradman.
It would be wrong to imagine that Fast Leg Theory
or Bodyline emerged fully formed from Jardine's
head at that precise moment. Jardine sounded out
both Larwood and Voce in early August 1932, at a
dinner in the grillroom of the Piccadilly Hotel.
Could they bowl accurately at leg stump, 'making
the ball come up into the body all the time' in
Larwood's own words, ' so that Bradman had to play
to leg' - 'we thought Don was frightened of sharp
rising balls. |
