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.