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| Sunday, 27 February 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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The Bodyline blockbuster by A. C. de Silva The bodyline episode rose its ugly head in the 1932-33 England tour of Australia. The one player that the spectators were after was English bowler, Herold ('Little Lol') Larwood. More than 50,000 spectators chanted a derisive count at every step taken by the bowler as he galloped up the wicket. He was booed on and off the field, and was bitterly attacked in the Australian press and once besieged by hooligans who boarded his train at a railway station. Such was the treatment meted out to Larwood. No player, in the history of the game has been the centre of such an ugly controversy. It ruined Larwood's cricketing career and nearly brought the England-Australia Test series to a summary end. The 'villain' of the so-called bodyline bowling scandal, was an inoffensive-looking man, slightly-built and only 5 feet 8 inches tall. But when this examiner from Nottingham was bowling flat out, he struck absolute terror into the hearts of the greatest batsmen. Taking a run of more than 20 paces, he pounded up to the wicket and projected his five-and-a-half ounce missile at 90 m.p.h. His express deliveries could remove stumps several yards and send the bails spinning almost to the boundary. Not a word of protest was uttered when Larwood bowled England to a 10-wkt victory in the First Test at Sydney by taking 10 wickets for 124 runs. And no one complained when Australia won the Second Test. But by that time the Australian press had coined a sinister new term - 'body-line'. They were referring to the England's tactical plan of fast leg-theory, designed to check the colossal scores of top Australian batsmen, particularly Don Bradman who, before this series, had amassed the astronomical total of 974 runs in seven Test innings. With so much attention being attributed to this episode, there was a film, on this most spoken of Bodyline method of bowling. After world acclaim for 'Chariots of Fire' the first sports oriented feature film to win an Oscar, producer Puttnam had no problem raising a huge budget to ensure a lavish production at genuine locations for 'Bodyline blockbuster'. There was a lot of money pumped in by Kerry Packer, the Australian TV tycoon who himself starred in a real life cricket rumpus after 'Bodyline'. The star figure without question was the demon bowler Herald Larwood. The two other principal characters in the 1932-33 drama, were Douglas Jardine, the England captain, who devised the Bodyline strategy, and Donald Bradman, its prime target. Jardine who had almost a total dislike of all Australians, died in 1958 and Bradman, to the surprise of many agreed to be portrayed' in the film under his own name, Bradman, died a few years ago. England's Gubby Allen, helped in the construction of writer Paul Wheeler's script. Allen, one of the four English fast bowlers on the tour, himself featured prominently in the controversy when he refused to bowl to instructions and led to so many injuries. Puttnam had difficulty in finding actors to emulate Larwood's classic bowling style, and Bradman's devastating batmanship was certainly greater than they were in finding his screen track stars in 'Chariots of Fire'. But hired as his director was Bruce Berresford, the Australian who made the brilliant Breaker Morant. Asked whether he could woo American audiences and compete for another Hollywood Oscar, Puttnam was confident then. "You see, it won't exactly be about the LBW law. It's about a huge political issue, about a man with a hard ball in a brutal business." It was not easy and there was a lot of training done to make actor Ben Cross run remotely like sprinter Herald Abrahams in 'Chariots'. This was nothing compared to training a man roughly 5 feet 7 inches, aged 27, to bowl like Herald Larwood. |
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