kenhiggs8 <kenhiggs8@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:6af2bb1.0307161649.6875194a@posting.google.com...
> Robert Henderson <Philip@anywhere.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:<MqkZ2QB6bOF$EwuV@anywhere.demon.co.uk>...
>
> snip
>
> >
> > The problem  with this story is that the Notts captain in 1932, A W
> > Carr, agreed at Jardine's request to allow Voce and Larwood to bowl
> > bodyline in the last month or so of the 1932 season, which they did.
> > Strangely, there was no great uproar in England when they did.
> >
>
> Yes, my understanding is that it had been bowled previously by Notts.
> Also, it would seem that it had been bowled previously as early as
> 1925 in Australia. Jardine appears to have been the first to use it in
> a Test Match.
>
>
> >
> > I doubt whether the bouncer barrage of Bodyline was a patch on the
> > tactics of the Windies in the period 1975-1995.
> >
>
> Frith, 'Bodyline Autopsy', feels that plenty of the post war bowling
> (especially the 80s WIndies) was of a much more deliberately
> intimidatory and dangerous nature than Larwood.
>
>
> Higgsy

Frith certainly didn't like the WI bowling under Lloyd & Richards, but I
think he's operating double standards in his far more sympathetic attitude
towards Bodyline.  Context, as they say, is everything.  Even if Bodyline
wasn't new,  I gather that the extent of it went well beyond what had been
practised previously, hence the outcry.  Plus, of course, batsmen were far
less well protected than 50 years later.  As has been said elsewhere,
Lloyd's tactics were at least partly a response to his side's experience of
Thomson & Lillee in 75/76, so he was only developing what was already
happening.  I suppose what was new was being able to have four of these guys
in the side.  There were times when the WI were OTT - the 1976 3rd test
Saturday evening barrage at Edrich & Close springs to mind, of course.  But
they were also magnificant bowlers, and Holding's demolition of England on a
flat Oval wicket in the same series could only be admired.

And it's not as if England haven't been prepared to dish it out when able
to. Willis' 2nd innings 8-for at Headingly in 1981, and Gough & Caddick's
removal of WI for 54 at Lord's in 2000 were clearly intimidating pieces of
bowling, but I haven't read anything by Frith criticising them.  Nor would I
want to as they were terrific performances by those bowlers.  I suppose the
main problem with the Friths of this world, apart from the double standards,
is we just end up sounding like a bunch of sore losers.

Cheers

David