Bodyline Bust-up
- Ninety Years Since Committee Resignation
Anyone looking at the social media of the 21st century will find plenty of evidence that those disgruntled at the performance and management of their favourite sports team have unprecedented space to vent their frustrations.
So it would come as no great surprise to find this sort of motion out in the cyber-verse:
‘…has no confidence in the present committee of the club and calls upon it to resign en bloc’.
Except…that was the resolution that a well-connected cohort of Nottinghamshire members wanted to put before an Extraordinary General Meeting of the club, Ninety years ago!
The group, supported by club captain Arthur Carr and fronted by club vice-president Cllr H Seely Whitby, were thwarted by the Committee deciding to call its own version of a special meeting at Nottingham’s Albert Hall on 16 January 1935.
All of this started – or had its origins – in the fallout from the ‘Bodyline’ Ashes tour of 1932-33 and the continuing rows and ramifications over the use of ‘leg theory’ bowling.
There was a strong feeling among Notts members that their club and committee were too ready to side with the cricket establishment rather than give full backing to their home-grown Ashes heroes, Harold Larwood and Bill Voce.
History affirms that Larwood was shabbily treated by the cricketing hierarchy of the 1930s; when he limped away from the Fifth Test of the Ashes at Sydney, few thought he had bowled his last ball for England.
But his refusal to ‘apologise’ for what he clearly saw as doing his job and complying with his captain’s orders meant that the MCC, as it was then, never selected him again.
That was perhaps understandable in 1933 when his foot was still injured and he could only play county cricket as a batter – he bowled in just one game.
By 1934, however, he was declared fit and was getting back to somewhere near his old fearsome pace when the Australians arrived for the next Ashes series. The big debate was whether Larwood and Voce would be chosen for the First Test, at their home ground of Trent Bridge. In the event, neither was picked – though Harold did help that decision by stating that, if chosen, he would bowl ‘leg theory’.
England paid the price and lost the match by 238 runs – even though debutant Ken Farnes of Essex took ten wickets in the match.
Things really came to a head when the Australians returned to Trent Bridge in August 1934 to play the county side. Larwood was again omitted but Bill Voce played – and played havoc with the Aussie batters.
On the first day he rattled through their batting order to take 8-66, all caught (most in the leg cordon), his best bowling figures of the season. Australia were all out 237 but still took a substantial first innings lead, dismissing Notts for 183.
There was just time for three overs of the visitors’ second innings – of which Voce bowled two – before rain ended the second day’s play.
In those two overs, and throughout the first innings, he had bowled ‘leg theory’ (what the press called Bodyline). This was his normal line of attack; as a left-armer bowling over the wicket he would naturally be targeting the batter’s body. It was the packing of the leg side with catchers that made his mode of attack potentially controversial.
A decent crowd turned up for day three and were dismayed when Voce did not take the field. After a number of shouts and catcalls, an announcement was made that ‘Voce is suffering a recurrence of his shin trouble and on medical advice will not play today’.
Rumours persisted that the Notts Committee had acquiesced with a complaint from the Australian team and, with encouragement from the MCC, had withdrawn Voce from the fray.
This feeling was stoked by Arthur Carr, who was not playing because of illness, stating that had he been captain, Voce would have played and bowled.
Dr George Ogg Gauld, Nottinghamshire’s Hon Secretary, said that he had examined Voce and advised him not to play.
The accusations and counter-claims rumbled on into the close season. Carr had resigned from the Notts Committee in protest at the decision to withdraw Voce from the Australia game. In December 1934, the Committee made the unprecedented announcement that the captaincy in 1935 would be shared between Stuart Rhodes and George Heane, the first (and last) time that the club captaincy would be shared.
At around this time it emerged that the Australian party had protested about Voce’s bowling and received what amounted to a letter of apology from the Notts Committee, via the MCC.
It was this that prompted Cllr Seely Whitby to canvass sufficient signatures from the membership to call for an Extraordinary Meeting to put the resolution demanding ‘en bloc’ resignation.
Instead, the Committee called a special meeting ostensibly to ‘receive a report from the Committee’.
About 2,500 members packed the Albert Hall meeting and the resolution was passed on a show of hands by a considerable majority. As a result, the entire Committee did, indeed, stand down – with such a show of dissent, they didn’t have a leg (theory) to stand on!
When elections were held for a new Committee, the ‘opposition’ put up a slate of candidates but of those only two, Arthur Carr and Sir Harold Bowden, were elected – the rest of the Old Committee were re-elected.
Dr Ogg Gauld, who had resigned his post as he felt his reputation and honour had been called into question, did not resume the post of Hon Sec and his long service to Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club came to a very low-key end.
The winner, if such a thing can come out of a prolonged and bitter dispute, was Sir Douglas McCraith, Committee member and a prominent local lawyer, who managed the public statements from the Committee and helped to negotiate the club to a position where a majority of members approved a motion deploring ‘direct attack’ bowling, an outcome that would have seemed unlikely in the heat of the summer of ’34.
McCraith was duly elected as Chairman of the newly-formed Committee in 1935, becoming the first person to claim that position – until then, meetings had been chaired by the President or a senior committee member.
He served on the Committee for three decades, had a term as President of the Club in 1937, including presiding over the celebrations of Trent Bridge’s 100th Anniversary (pictured), and was appointed as a ‘life member’ in 1951.
In addition to the row with – or certainly inspired by – the Australians, Nottinghamshire were accused by three counties in 1934 of breaching a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ not to use ‘direct attack’ bowling.
The fact that the Notts Committee upheld two of those complaints must have fuelled the flames of the members’ discontent. Lancashire, one of the complainants, were so outraged by what they saw as unfair tactics that they refused fixtures with Notts in 1935.
Given what has happened with hostile fast bowling since WWII, it feels more than a little odd now to reflect on the turmoil that arose from the Bodyline series and its aftermath.
Ninety years on, what would Notts give now for a Larwood or a Voce – or better yet, both?
February 2025