A drama about cricket, at first sight, doesn’t smack too much of a great idea for television. The desperate pitching of ideas by Alan Partridge to that programming commissioner in I’m Alan Partridge springs to mind (“Monkey Tennis”?). Well, how about a brilliant, riveting TV drama about cricket that doesn’t even require you to be a cricket fan to enjoy? If that sounds oxymoronic, check out 1984’s Australian-made TV mini-series Bodyline, telling the story of the 1932/33 English Ashes cricket tour of Australia.
Stick with me.
First, the historical setting: in 1932, the England cricket team set sail to Australia to face an Australian team hugely bolstered by one Donald Bradman, who had come to England in the 1930 Ashes and scored 974 runs with a batting average of 139.14. The England cricket authorities felt that some new tactics were needed to curtail Bradman’s extraordinary batting ability which threatened to be even more prodigious in the upcoming tour on his home turf.
Enter Douglas Jardine. Oxford University-educated, and from the upper echelons of British society, Jardine had been moulded to be England captain from an early age. He had already toured Australia and had developed an antipathy to the crowds there who had jeered him. And now he was lead tactician on how to defuse Bradman. With his fast bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce, he devised “fast leg theory” bowling – later called “bodyline” – which entailed delivering the ball short and fast so that it bounced dangerously towards the batsman’s body. When the batsman defended himself with his bat a resulting deflection could be caught by one of several fielders standing close by on the leg side.
The tactic turned out to be effective: it seriously discomfited the batsmen and England won by four Tests to one, but it created a furore that threatened to turn into a diplomatic incident. The watching crowds were outraged and most commentators thought the tactics unsportsmanlike, intimidating and downright dangerous (who thought that it would be the English to employ tactics that were “just not cricket”?).
In the TV series, Douglas Jardine is played mesmerizingly by a young Hugo Weaving (best known later for his portrayals of Agent Smith in The Matrix and Elrond in The Lord of the Rings), who admirably captures the arrogance and certainty of a born leader, and one who doggedly pursues his strategy against mounting criticism.
Let’s watch the self-assured Jardine discussing Bradman with his Surrey teammate Percy Fender and others prior to the tour. He’s great to watch, and note also the lovely camera work circling him as he talks. One last word for the writer of the theme music for the series; the music is so emotionally moving (see the second clip of the opening credits) that I thought at first they had borrowed a classical piece from someone like Pachelbel but not so: credit to Aussie composer Chris Neal.
