[Exile on Spencer St]

With all this chatter lately about ‘the spirit’ of cricket, and how it was so much more ‘sporting’ in the ‘good old days’, it surprises me no one has brought up the name of Douglas Jardine.
He was the quintessential ‘gentleman’ cricketer, an amateur captain of England, schooled at Winchester (manners maketh the man) and Oxford, and played for that most refined county of Surrey.
But, ask any Aussie what he was and the response may be different - a cheating cad, who used ‘body line’ bowling (i.e. aiming at the leg stump and the batter’s body) in the ‘32-33 tour of Australia. This, ostensibly, to nullify the batting prowess of Donald Bradman, to some the best batsman ever to puck up a plank of willow.
It wasn’t the first time that type of bowling had been seen but, at the time in test matches, it was definitely not ‘cricket’, old boy.

Personally, whilst I enjoy watching cricket, it always seemed a dangerous way to spend an afternoon and had only the loosest connection to gentlemanly behaviour.
The idea that a batsman would be thinking about the ‘spirit’ of the game as he faced the bowling of Wes Hall at Thorneyholme Road always seemed fanciful, if not potentially fatal.