“Don’t give the bastard a drink. Let him die of thirst.”
Douglas Jardine’s mission was almost complete. England were about to complete a crushing series victory over Australia with a win in the fifth Test at Sydney in the famous Bodyline series of 1932-33. Jardine was at the crease, savouring the moment, when play stopped for a drinks break. The chivalrous Australian captain Bill Woodfull was about to hand Jardine some water when a lone voice suggested that it might be better to let his opposite number’s dehydration become terminal. Jardine, who had spent the entire series disparaging all things Australian, quietly enjoyed that particular bit of barracking. He later called it “one of the few humorous remarks which we were privileged to hear on this tour”.
Jardine was characterised as the archetypal English villain, cold and calculating, the kind of man who would be played by Alan Rickman. “Jardine is loathed more than any German who ever fought in any war,” wrote Gubby Allen in a letter during the Bodyline tour, before adding: “Sometimes I feel I should like to kill [him] and today is one of those days.”
During the third Test at Adelaide, Jardine went to the Australian dressing-room to demand an apology because one of the Australian players had called Harold Larwood “a bastard”. He was met by Vic Richardson. “OK,” he said, turning round to his team-mates, “which of you bastards called Larwood a bastard instead of this bastard?”
When Jardine swatted a fly away from his face during one match, he was upbraided by a spectator. “Oi, leave our flies alone, Jardine – they’re the only flamin’ friends you’ve got here.” In his book, In Quest of the Ashes, Jardine devoted an entire chapter to his love of Australian crowds. “It is high time that full publicity was given to the evils of barracking,” he said. “One would expect that any genuine enthusiast would be tempted to tell the owner of an empty head and a pair of brazen lungs that he was spoiling the enjoyment of others round about him by going off at minute intervals like a raucous maroon. . . I cannot help thinking that a psychologist would find it extraordinarily interesting to experiment with an Australian barracker.”
The treatment of Jardine was a significant landmark in the development of Aussie barracking. When England try to win the Ashes in Australia, it is not so much 11 against 11 as 11 against 23 million. They have to compete with the entire country. The process of mental disintegration begins the moment they step off the plane – or even before, in the age of social media – and continues until they step back on it.
Every England cricketer who has played in Australia has a story to tell. Kevin Pietersen says he was “called a wanker 24/7” – and not just by his team-mates – while Stuart Broad was public enemy No1 throughout the 2013–14 series because he did not walk during the preceding Ashes. When the Australian-raised bowler Martin McCague hailed a taxi during the 1994–95 series, the driver spat: “You’re that bloody English traitor. Clear off. I’m not taking you.” Four years later, John Crawley was pummelled in an assault outside a bar in Cairns.
And these incidents took place outside the ground. Inside, the attitude tends to vary from affectionate contempt to outright hatred. Fielding in front of Bay 13 at the MCG, in particular, has become a rite of passage for callow English tourists. David Bairstow was once pelted with beer cans in an ODI at Sydney – and Australia weren’t even playing.
“A cricket tour in Australia would be the most delightful period in your life. . . if you were deaf,” said Larwood. He probably thought that, when the Bodyline tour finished, he would be returning to a bit of peace and quiet in England. He could not have been more wrong.
- Extract taken from Gentlemen and Sledgers: A History of the Ashes in 100 Quotations by Rob Smyth. Published by Head of Zeus.