January 12, 2019
Book Review
Harold Larwood by Duncan Hamilton
Publisher: Quercus, London - pp. 387
by S. Rifaquat Ali
Of all the biographies of cricket's all-time greats --past and present -- Harold Larwood, authored by Duncan Hamilton, is the finest I have read in the last fifty years.
It's wonderfully absorbing and as gripping as any Shakesperean play.
Hamilton's magnum opus is a superlative account of the most fearsome fast bowler of the Bradman Era which fetched him the prestigious Wisden Book of the year for 2009 at the 2010 British Sports Book Awards.
The beauty of the book is that even after a decade it is the best seller, read by millions of cricket aficionados around the world. Duncan had taken pains to portray Larwood as a feral fast bowler on the cricket field and a gentleman off the field.
He researched Larwood, bit by bit after he had access to his family and archives. "One of the most talented accurate and intimadating fast bowlers of all time," as Duncan writes, Larwood became the cause of Anglo-Australian soured diplomatic relations to the brink of collapse.
The Bodyline furor was the most talked about subject matter among the leading sports journalists around the world. The British captain Douglas Jardine had ordered Larwood to bowl at the batsman and not at the wicket with the sole intent of physically hurting him during the 1932-33 Ashes series in Australia, popularly known as 'fast leg theory.'
Hamilton writes: " At five foot seven and a half inches tall, and less than eleven stone in weight, Harold Larwood looked physically less formidable than his predecessors, contemporaries or successors, but he produced enough fierce heat to turn the most bellicose of batsmen into pacifists against him.
He was a devastatingly brutal and physically intimadating bowler, who routinely inflicted pain. He bruised flesh, broke bones, knocked batsmen unconscious, had them hoisted off on a stretcher and hospitalized.
If Larwood hit you, with uppercut digs into the gut or chest, or with a ball that skidded like a pebble off water onto the thigh bone, the mathematicians calculated that it was the equivalent of absorbing two tonnes."
Larwood generated so much pace that wicketkeeper Les Ames used to say that he stood so far back that he was in another country when he collected the ball. Larwood had a dislike for Donald Bradman who paid scant respect to fast bowlers.
Even when he was face to face with the great Don, Larwood made grimaces since Bradman never returned a smile off the field and was pretty proudy about his batting. And this hurt Larwood to the core and eventually made the Don his target while bowling to him.
Larwood realized much later the wicked intent of Jardine and left England for good and settled in Australia, a country he once despised.
On the field, Larwood was aggressive, like a wounded tiger, off the field he was a gentleman to the hilt. Such was the persona of one of the greatest fast bowlers this world has known.
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
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