Lives in Cricket No 18 - FR Foster

Control the game will be ruined in the coming season. Even schoolboy fast bowlers, encountering difficult wickets and expert batsmen will bowl bumpers deliberately at the man instead of the wicket. Body-line bowling must be abolished. The only solution is to give the umpire power to no-ball. And it must be done before the 1934 season, as Jardine may still be captain when the Australians visit us. The Smith’s Weekly article then concluded with a comment on P.F.Warner’s presence in the visiting party and a revelation regarding the body-line plan. About Warner he said: ‘In the whole history of cricket, there have never previously been two managers sent to Australia with an England XI. Warner was sent to keep the peace. The cable sent by the Australian Board of Control is evidence that he failed in his object.’ Foster’s final statement concerning Jardine contains the honest indignation of a sportsman who has felt himself misused, or so stated Smith’s Weekly : ‘Before Jardine left England, he came frequently to my flat in St James and secured fromme my leg-theory field placings. I had no hint these would be used for body-line bowling. I would like all my old friends in Australian cricket to know that I am sorry that my experience and my advice were put to such unworthy uses.’ Smith’s Weekly went on to say that Foster’s article was ‘the death-knell of bodyline bowling in the minds of all decent sportsmen and in the playing of all decent cricket’. (There are those who would say that had Foster been Australian it would have been thought of as part of a massive whinge.) Australian writer J.C.Davis then gives a short biography of Foster, emphasising Foster’s qualifications to speak with ‘authority and soundness’ on the bodyline matter. Foster was still not finished. As previously mentioned a gramophone record was made, Foster giving his point of view, Larwood then recording his reply. Through the kindness of David Frith I have heard a tape of the recording. There is little that Foster said which I have not already mentioned above and the sound is so bad that it is hard to work out what Foster is saying, though the slight ‘Brummie’ accent is apparent. Larwood attempts justification of his bodyline tactics, pleading that he has never bowled at a batsman in his life and that leg-theory is no more unsporting than a batsman playing with his pads. Foster was pleased to note in his unpublished writings that, whereas he wrote his own ‘speech’, Larwood was scripted by Foster’s old adversary E.H.D.Sewell. Foster only knew this when the Columbia recording manager asked him to send a copy of what he intended to say to Sewell. Foster had never met Sewell until now and took the opportunity to ask him why he criticised him and Tiger Smith some twenty years before, but no explanation was recorded. The English press, by and large, was not well disposed towards Foster in 1933. In the Lord’s pressbox during the 1933 Test match he met up with H.J.Henley, of the Daily Mail . Foster respected Henley, regarding him as a ‘beautiful writer’ and a staunch supporter of England. Henley had ‘decided The shambolic 1930s 103