Lives in Cricket No 40 - Edwin Smith

82 Summer of drama beautifully in the match, returning figures of 23-1-43-2 and 19.4-11-29- 2. With Colin Bland, Graeme Pollock and the South African captain Peter Van der Merwe among his wickets, he had coped well with the best, but remembers the match more for its atmosphere after Buller’s actions It was poisonous, dark. Sid was a good man and a respected umpire, but he got dreadful abuse from the crowd, who slow hand-clapped him as he walked off at tea, accompanied by two policemen. There was one old chap there who hooked him round his neck with a walking stick. It was very quiet in the dressing room. Harold was devastated, we all were for him. Mike Page was standing at square-leg, alongside Buller, when Rhodes was called and couldn’t believe it. There was nothing wrong with Harold’s action. We never once questioned it among the team and when Sid called no ball, my first thought was that we had too many men behind square. We all gradually realised what had happened and it was awful – and totally wrong. Neither the players nor supporters could understand how, after three and a half years and the scrutiny of 29 umpires, including Buller, Harold Rhodes was suddenly being called for throwing again. There were suggestions that it was a move to save the selectors from embarrassment, what Ian Wooldridge in the Daily Mail called a ‘ceremonial calling ... no spur of the moment decision’. It was something firmly believed by the players, according to Edwin. What rankled was the fact that they did it now, when he was taking wickets. There was something different about Harold’s action and it was later proven to be a hyper-extension of the elbow. In other words, it went past straight, in the latter part of his delivery swing, by around ten degrees. To the naked eye, it perhaps sometimes gave the illusion of a throw, but anyone who understood the mechanics of bowling should have realised that it is almost impossible to throw from a sideways position. Besides anything else, Harold was relentlessly accurate, something that ‘chuckers’ could never achieve. Perhaps the player’s success was at the root of it all and those spoken to by the author still feel that the catalyst for events were the two games against Middlesex. One told of another player who had a very short first- class career when his action came under scrutiny. There was a spinner at Somerset, David Doughty, who was widely reckoned to throw in a brief career. In a game against Kent, the umpires decided he should be removed from the attack at the same time that Colin Cowdrey came to the crease. He asked why they were taking him off and was told that they thought he was throwing. ‘Leave him on’ said Cowdrey, ‘He’s not throwing very well!’ The players were without exception supportive, although events spawned