Retired hurt, absent hurt

Bert Oldfield’s line in Australia’s first innings at Adelaide reads retired hurt 41. In the second it reads absent hurt, with a dash in every column.

Between those two entries, a Test match nearly stopped being played at all.

The third day

Australia were replying to England’s 341 when Bill Woodfull, the captain, was struck over the heart by Harold Larwood early in his innings. He dropped his bat and doubled over. Play stopped while he was attended to and he carried on to make 22, fourth out at 51.

Douglas Jardine then moved his fielders to the leg side while Woodfull was still recovering, and the crowd at the Adelaide Oval reacted in a way that produced mounted police outside the ground.

Later in the innings Oldfield, on 41, top-edged a Larwood delivery into his own temple. His skull was fractured. Australia were 218 for seven and he did not bat again in the match.

Full scorecard: Australia v England, 3rd Test, Adelaide, 13–19 January 1933 →

What the rest of the card shows

England won by 338 runs, which was not close.

Larwood took three for 55 and four for 71. Gubby Allen, who refused throughout the tour to bowl to the leg-side field, took four for 71 and four for 50 and was the most successful bowler England had in the match.

Bradman made 8 and 66. Woodfull carried his bat for 73 not out in the second innings and was the last man standing while nine wickets fell around him.

It ran six days, with a Sunday rest day in the middle, and Australia’s final wicket column reads nine rather than ten because Oldfield could not come out.

What was said off it

The Australian Board sent a cable to the MCC during the match using the word unsportsmanlike. The MCC replied offering to cancel the remainder of the tour. Governments became involved on both sides.

None of that is on the scorecard. What is on it is a fast bowler’s figures, a wicketkeeper’s two entries, and a margin of 338.

Why it cannot happen again

Leg theory worked because a captain could place as many fielders on the leg side as he liked, behind square or in front of it. Jardine used up to seven. A batsman defending his head had nowhere to put the ball that was not a catch.

The Law was changed. No more than two fielders may now stand behind square on the leg side, and a ball that passes over head height of a batter standing upright at the crease is called a no-ball.

The field on that scorecard is illegal. Not frowned upon, not discouraged by a code of conduct: illegal, in the Laws, since 1957.

Fifty-one years later

Another batsman was struck on the head by a fast bowler and had to be recorded twice on the same card, once as retired hurt and once as absent. Andy Lloyd at Edgbaston in 1984 lost a Test career to it.

The difference is the helmet, which Lloyd was wearing and Oldfield was not. The similarity is that the scorecard has exactly the same two phrases available in both cases and no way of distinguishing between a fractured skull and a jarred knee.

What is not recoverable

Whether Larwood meant it.

He said afterwards that the ball to Oldfield was not a bouncer, that Oldfield had moved across and got a top edge on it, and that he apologised on the field. Oldfield agreed publicly that it was his own error.

Both men held those positions for the rest of their lives, and both had reasons to. Larwood was bowling to a plan designed by his captain to make batting dangerous, and the fact that one particular delivery was not part of it is a distinction the crowd was in no position to make and the record has no column for.

••••••

No. 1 in Unrepeatable, a series of 22.

NextThe match with no last day