by Arunabha Sengupta
He refused to bowl Bodyline.
Jardine insisted, Gubby Allen refused.
“I’ve never done that, and it’s not the way I want to play cricket.”
While Larwood, Voce and Bowes bowled leg-theory, Allen bowled the normal stuff. Being an amateur, he could afford to take a stand.
At least that is how the story goes.
It is further embellished by one of the many letters Allen wrote home to his parents. Extracts from these letters were published in Allen’s biography penned by his friend and English cricket’s devoted pro-establishment scribe EW Swanton. The book with a foreword by Alex Home-Gordon, former Prime Minister, Lord Home of the Hirsel.
[On the eve of the Melbourne Test] ‘DRJ came to me and said: “I had a talk with the boys, Larwood and Voce, last night and they say it is quite absurd you not bowling bouncers: they say it is only because you are keen on your popularity.” Well! I burst and said <part lovingly omitted by Swanton> that if it had been a question only of popularity I could have bowled bouncers years ago.’
After that Allen supposedly asked Jardine to leave him out until the captain came to his senses, adding that it would give him time to complete a full statement of the conversation for the benefit of the MCC Committee. The matter rested there. Allen played. He did not bowl Bodyline.
If we take away the loving cover-up of Swanton’s pen, the first part actually reads: ‘DRJ came to me and said: “I had a talk with the boys, Larwood and Voce, last night and they say it is quite absurd you not bowling bouncers: they say it is only because you are keen on your popularity.” Well! I burst and said a good deal about swollen headed gutless uneducated miners and that if it had been a question only of popularity I could have bowled bouncers years ago.’
As can be deciphered from the redacted bit, Allen was an Eton-Cambridge-educated, class-conscious snob.
He was a hypocrite to boot. He wrote spiteful letters about Jardine, all the while smiling away beside him in tour photographs.
David Frith pointed out that Allen had no qualms in standing close on the leg side as Bodyline was being unleashed. He held six catches in the leg trap.
And while he did rave and rant about bowling bouncers, he never specified why he found it objectionable—other than hinting that it was a job meant for mining menials like Larwood and Voce. At that stage, complaints against Bodyline had not really found an universal voice, and Allen did not for once mention the physical danger to batsmen in his many many detailed letters home.
The Nottinghamshire bowlers did equate Allen the amateur’s busy and lavish social life and the many Australian friends he was being entertained by (after all he was born in Australia) with his refusal to bowl at the body. It was not really too far-fetched an accusation.
.Besides, later Bob Wyatt suggested that Allen actually lacked the accuracy to bowl leg-theory. To admit so would have been admitting that he was an inferior bowler than the professionals and would have stung Allen to the quick.
Swanton tries to paper over this crack by alluding to a letter in which Allen writes: “I could have bowled Bodyline though not so well as Harold.” There is no such letter in existence. The voice of establishment was just doing the face of establishment a favour there by inventing some facts.
Allen even accused Jardine of favouring the professionals by allowing them to bowl to the tail, while “in my ordinary way, I bowled both innings the best except possibly for Hammond.”
Well, Allen got 2 for 41 and 2 for 44, Larwood 2 for 52 and 2 for 50, Voce 3 for 54 and 2 for 47. Hammond’s three wickets contained two tail-enders, which Alllen conveniently ignored.
Besides, looking closely at the figures, the difference at Melbourne was the unbeaten 103 by Bradman. Larwood conceded 30 from 43 balls against The Don, Voce 22 off 40. Allen gave away 24 off 23.
Allen should not have gone on the tour. He played just 8 First-Class matches in 1932, picking up 25 wickets. As many as 25 bowlers topped 100 that season, among them Nichols and Geary were fast bowlers who could have easily gone in his place.
However, Allen went. He did not do too badly, 21 wickets at 28.23, but perhaps he was lucky to be there in the first place. He was the protégé of manager Plum Warner after all. The face of cricket took great interest in his career.
Speculations were aplenty that he was actually Warner’s son. People hinted at the closeness of their relationship, the leeway he enjoyed, unusual interest of Warner in his career and even similarities of features. The ears are remarkably alike.
No one quite mentions the similar double-faced dealings during Bodyline. That can be a genetic trait as well.
He also returned in 1936-37 as captain. An all-rounder with not bad numbers, but who never scored over 1000 runs in a season, nor captured 100 wickets.
750 Test runs at 24.19, 81 wickets at 29.37, the batting figures beefed up against New Zealand, the bowling against the Kiwis and the Indians.
He became a member of the MCC Committee first and Test captain later.
That was how MCC worked in those days.
Unfortunately, even three decades later, that was how MCC worked. It was Gubby Allen whose vacuous vacillating, indecisive wishful thinking, aided by his staunch, stubborn refusal to severe the long-term Old Boys’ Club ties with South Africa that led to the Dolly crisis of 1968.
He was a class-snob, that we have seen. It is not clear whether colour of the skin meant much to him or not. Colour of the tie definitely did.
The picture is of Allen and Swanton sitting in their suits and MCC ties, in the Harris Garden at Lord’s, with the memorial stone of Lord Harris behind them.
Nothing captures the bygone (perhaps even modern) era of MCC more than this. A gilded, stuffy citadel of privileged ultra-exclusiveness.
Gubby Allen was born on 31 July 1902.