while touring England in 1930 meant that finding a strategy to neutralize his sublime run-scoring prowess would be vital if England were to stand any chance of regaining the Ashes.
Douglas Robert Jardine was a son of the British Empire. Born to Scottish parents in Bombay in 1900, cricket was an intrinsic part of his upbringing. His father, Malcom Jardine, had played first-class cricket for Oxford University and Middlesex before becoming a successful barrister in India.
As was typical of the time, at the age of 9, Douglas was sent from India to live with his mother’s sister in St Andrews in Scotland from where he was to be educated at boarding schools in England. By the age of 12 he was captaining his school XI to an unbeaten record in his final year. Already the self-belief, some would say an unwillingness to listen to the counsel and advice of others, was showing itself as Jardine repeatedly disagreed with his school cricket coach about his batting method.
While the world descended into the maelstrom of the First World War, a 14-year-old Jardine entered Winchester College, one of England’s oldest and finest public schools. Life at the school was arduous, the prevailing ethos austere, the discipline bordering on the harsh. Sport was an important part of the curriculum, a curriculum designed to prepare the boys for a life of governance and, in many cases, future military duty with every prospect of seeing war first hand. Jardine entered the school with a reputation as a cricketer and soon established himself as an all-round sportsman, playing football, rackets and Winchester College football (a rugby-union-like game with a peculiar set of rules only understood and esteemed by Wykehamists), but it was for cricket that Jardine earned renown. He was in the First XI within three years and remained there until his last year, when he captained the side and topped the batting averages. With him leading the side and scoring 89, Jardine’s Winchester College beat Eton College in 1919 – the first time in twelve years Winchester had gained the upper hand. Later in life and after retiring from cricket, Jardine would say that the 89 he scored on a sunny afternoon as his school days came to an end and the world put itself to rights after unimaginable horror was his favourite innings.
Jardine entered Oxford University in late 1919 and won his Blue initially for real tennis. The following year he made his first-class début as an opening batsman, winning his cricketing Blue. In 1921 Jardine encountered an Australian touring side for the first time when Oxford played Warwick Armstrong’s side, who had been dominating the season up until that point. Jardine battled to 96 to save the match but was unable to reach his century before the game ended. While contemporary reports suggest the Australians were keen to help Jardine reach the landmark (his 96 not out was the highest score by any player against the Australians so far on the tour), offering some particularly soft bowling, it was not to be. It has been suggested that the request by the Australians to have the game reduced to two days from the planned three in order that they might have a rest day between matches combined with alleged on-field sarcasm by Armstrong directed at Jardine’s slow progress sowed the seeds of what would be a lifelong dislike, bordering on hatred, for Australia and Australians by Jardine.
The innings against Australia brought Jardine to the notice of the England selectors and the influential Pelham ‘Plum’ Warner, and it was thought he might have been selected to play for England in the forthcoming series, but while remaining in contention for a place for some time, he was not selected. Jardine now joined Surrey, replacing the injured Jack Hobbs as opening bat before dropping down the order to number five. What became increasingly clear was that Jardine was a batsman of caution, defensively minded, who came into his own when the pressure to occupy the crease was at a premium.
The following season was largely lost to injury. In 1923, his last year at Oxford, he returned to cricket but was not appointed captain of the side and it has been suggested that his austere unfriendly manner was the reason he was denied the honour, although his absence through injury the previous season may have been a more likely reason. During a match later in the season, Jardine deliberately used his pads to defend his wicket. While within the rules, it was widely seen and reported in the newspapers as being against the spirit of the game. Jardine’s biographers have noted that it was this adverse criticism that led to his deep-seated hostility to the press thereafter, something he would retain for the rest of his life.
After Oxford Jardine began to train as a solicitor while playing for Surrey as an amateur. In 1924 he was appointed vice-captain to Percy Fender. As will be discussed elsewhere, captaincy of a county side was the prerogative of the amateurs and although the Surrey side of the day featured Jack Hobbs, still it was Jardine who was seen as the rightful appointee. In the 1927 season Jardine scored 1,002 runs at an average of 91.09 and was named by Wisden as one of their five cricketers of the year. By the end of the 1928 season, when he made his Test début against West Indies, selection for the forthcoming winter tour to Australia was seen as a certainty.
Australia’s ageing post-war team had broken up in 1926 and England would be facing an inexperienced side led by Jack Ryder. There is no doubt Jardine’s first tour of Australia was a success. He began with three consecutive centuries. But already the Australian crowds had begun barracking him for slow scoring and less than agile fielding. Nevertheless, Donald Bradman was full of praise, calling Jardine’s third century one of the finest exhibitions of stroke play he had witnessed. The Australian crowds, however, took an active dislike to, of all things, Jardine’s choice of headwear.
Oxford University traditionally awarded a Harlequin cap to those who played good cricket. Former Oxford and Cambridge men often wore these caps while batting, in England at least, but it was less usual to wear them while fielding, and, when combined with Jardine’s aloof, angular and unresponsive manner, it inflamed the essentially decent but egalitarian nature of the Australian crowd, whose mood descended from good-natured barracking to outright hostility and abuse. Journalist and Test cricketer Jack Fingleton, who would have an important but disputed role during the Bodyline series, would say afterwards that Jardine had ample opportunity to win over the Australian crowds by the simple gestures of a self-deprecating smile and the odd joke at his own expense. The crowd was knowledgeable and had little doubt about Jardine’s capability as a batsman, but Australians like their sportsmen to be human and free of condescension – characteristics far from being evident in Jardine’s manner and bearing.
Jardine’s good form with the bat continued and his resolute crease-occupying focus played a vital role as England secured victories in the first two Tests. In the Third Test England were left with the difficult task of scoring 332 runs to win on a rain-damaged wicket. In one of their most famous partnerships, Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe put on 105. Hobbs had sent a message to the dressing room saying Jardine should be the next man in even though he was due to bat lower down the order. When Hobbs was dismissed Jardine came in and, despite finding batting extremely difficult, saw out the remainder of the day. England went on to take an unlikely win and many commentators said that only Jardine could have coped with the difficult conditions.
In Tasmania Jardine posted his highest first-class score of 214. England won the Fourth Test, Jardine and Hammond putting on the then highest third-wicket partnership in Test history of 262.
Australia won the final Test in Melbourne during which Jardine was used, unsuccessfully, as an opener replacing the injured Sutcliffe. After Jardine had completed his second innings (out for a first-ball duck), he immediately crossed Australia to catch a boat to India for a holiday. This was the era of timeless Tests, and although this was the fifth day, there remained three days of play. Whether his departure was planned or his tolerance of Australia and Australians had finally reached breaking point remains unclear to this day. Nevertheless, the mutual antipathy had been firmly established and would only grow over the next four years, culminating in the events of the 1932–3 series.
The Ashes series of 1928–9 also saw the Test début of a player who would go on to rewrite the record books, find cricketing immortality and unintentionally ensure that forever after Douglas Jardine would be remembered as an unconscionable villain and would-be destroyer of the great game.
When Donald Bradman was two and half years old, his parents moved the family 260 km east from his birthplace, Cootamundra, New South Wales, to the small town of Bowral, where as a schoolboy he would spend countless hours hitting a golf ball with a cricket stump against the curved wall of a water