Ashes: After first Test belligerence, will Adelaide become a bumper battle?

During the Bodyline series, Australian captain Bill Woodfull came under pressure to retaliate against England’s brutal tactics that threatened to maim his batsmen.

Ever the gentleman, Woodfull would hear no talk of bouncing England back – despite the eagerness of some within the team’s ranks to do just that.

Instead, Australia’s Board of Control decided on a path of doomed diplomacy, daring to question English sportsmanship in a famous cable to the MCC’s headquarters. It didn’t go down well, to put it mildly, prompting some heated and high-minded rhetoric from Lord’s.

“We, the Marylebone Cricket Club, deplore your cable. We deprecate your opinion that there has been unsportsmanlike play,” began their uppity response.

More than eight decades later, it is England’s captain Alastair Cook who finds himself in a similar situation to Woodfull.

In the wake of Australia’s devastating short-pitched bowling at the Gabba, Cook must decide on how to return fire because there is nothing to stop Australia from persisting with the same strategy for the rest of the summer.

In Brisbane, Johnson and Harris at times bowled as close to Bodyline as the game’s laws allowed them to, coming around the wicket and hurling fast and short deliveries at the batsmen’s ribs with two short legs and two men behind square for the miscued hook.

Shane Warne had called for something like this. Johnson himself had threatened it. Jonathan Trott had surely expected it. Yet few foresaw how stunningly effective the tactic would be and how liberally it would be applied.

It is interesting to ponder how the plan was hatched – was it premeditated or spur of the moment? Did Michael Clarke’s dismissal to a Broad bumper in the first innings prove decisive? Was that the remember-who-started-this moment – like Dennis Lillee’s chagrined comment to Tony Greig after being bounced at Brisbane nearly 40 year ago?

At stumps on day two, after England’s collapse, Johnson said he was happy bowling over the wicket to Michael Carberry but it was Clarke who told him to switch. This suggests the decision was an impromptu and instinctive one.

After two short balls, Johnson produced a snorter that had Carberry caught at first slip. It set the tone for the rest of the Test match.

Excessive short-pitched bowling has always caused uncomfortable murmurings among the game’s administrators.

In his essay ‘The Sporting Spirit,’ in which he famously dubbed sport “war minus the shooting,” George Orwell remarked how “even a leisurely game like cricket, demanding grace rather than strength, can cause much ill-will, as we saw in the controversy over body-line bowling and over the rough tactics of the Australian team that visited England in 1921.”

The Bodyline series was not the first time a cricket team had come under scrutiny for bowling bouncers. But it has since become a benchmark, a point of reference for observers of the game. In 1948, Keith Miller was condemned by Sir Pelham ‘Plum’ Warner – who had been England’s tour manager during Bodyline – for using the tactic. Miller was booed during the First Test against England at Nottingham after striking Len Hutton with a bouncer. Four years later, Ray Lindwall was accused of bowling “borderline Bodyline” against the touring West Indians.

Ironically, it was the West Indies who were to become masters of the art in the mid-60s, with Griffith and Hall, and then again in the late 1970s and ’80s. In former umpire Harold ‘Dickie’ Bird’s autobiography, he devotes a chapter to the subject of intimidatory bowling. Unsurprisingly, the names Croft, Marshall, Roberts and Walsh figure prominently. In 1984, Bird “watched Malcolm Marshall bowl three short-pitched deliveries to Paul Downton in one over, all of them rearing unpleasantly. Worse still, he went round the wicket, which indicated to me that he intended to attack the body, a tactic the West Indies have often employed.” Marshall confirmed that this was indeed often his plan in an icy sledge to David Boon. “Are you going to get out now or am I going to have to bowl around the wicket and kill you?” he is alleged to have said.

Fifty years ago, the great cricket writer CLR James referred to Bodyline as “the violence and ferocity of our age expressing itself in cricket.”

In his book ‘Beyond a Boundary,’ James argued that it was no coincidence that Bodyline emerged in the 1930s, a decade in which political tensions eventually spilled over into war.

To speak of the return of Bodyline is therefore, in a cricketing context, a little like referring to the revival of fascism. Bodyline has periodic resurgences – it is merely that modern batsmen are better equipped to deal with them, so they tend to go unnoticed.

It is a scourge always simmering in the background, always threatening to rear its ugly head. In the last Ashes series in Australia, it reappeared – albeit briefly – in Perth.

Scyld Berry observed in Wisden that “an unusual feature of this match, a consequence of the pitch regaining some of its famous bounce, was that one bowler from each side tried an over of Bodyline – short balls rather than outright bouncers – from round the wicket. After Siddle had done it to Prior… Tremlett responded by doing the same to Smith – and [got] him caught gloving down the legside. Neither umpire… appeared to intervene.”

At Brisbane, Clarke’s ugly altercation with Jimmy Anderson proved what was already obvious – that the threat of physical harm was being used to take wickets. Johnson’s bowling was nevertheless an irresistible sight.

At his best, he combines the skills of Wasim Akram with those of Waqar Younis. He has the left-arm swing of Wasim and the rapid sling of Waqar. Beneath a thick crop of jet black hair, he runs in almost on tip toe. He is lithe, lynx-like, a hunter stalking prey. At the point of delivery, his front arm shoots skyward, fully stretched like some unsavoury political salute. But it is suspended there only for an instant, pulling his bowling arm behind it and extracting every inch of speed.

England lacks a bowler with the same lethal trajectory. Steven Finn is whippy rather than slingy, but has height on his side. He can bowl at 90mph and has hinted at a desire to break the 100mph barrier. Three years ago, he was dropped after making little impact in Adelaide and Perth. This time, it may be Tremlett who makes way for the quicker Finn.

David Warner has said Australia will have to adopt a changed “game plan” in Adelaide because of the different conditions, but it would be unwise to bet on it.

The Adelaide Oval is less likely to be conducive to speed and bounce but that probably won’t stop Australia from reverting to rib rattlers if England digs in. After all, the pitch was not enough to deter Harold Larwood more than eight decades ago – the paceman provoked a near-riot that threatened to spill onto the field when a short delivery hit Bert Oldfield, fracturing his skull. (A Larwood lifter had already struck Woodfull a fierce blow over the heart.)

More recently, in last year’s Adelaide Test, Dale Steyn came around the wicket, bouncing Michael Clarke with a leg-slip in place. As hostile as it was, the tactic proved ineffective – Clarke was dismissed the following morning for 230, but he will not have forgotten the workover.

The lingering emotions of Brisbane – Australia’s elation, England’s resentment – have left the series compellingly poised.

In crushing England by 381 runs in Brisbane, Australia gained a distinct psychological advantage. It has grown since England announced Trott would return home and take no further part in the series.

If Australia persists with short-pitched shock tactics in Adelaide, the series could again become heated. It will be up to England to decide if it follows suit – using Broad and perhaps Finn to extract bounce from the pitch. Adelaide has a history of producing bumper Tests – batsmen have harvested runs, while spinners have reaped carnage on last-day pitches.

Only time will tell if this upcoming match will be a ‘bumper’ one in an altogether different sense.