SIDELINE CUT:SUMMER TIME in England means cricket and every time the Ashes series rolls around, the legacy of one man automatically springs to mind. Was Harold Larwood the most interesting English sportsman of the last century? asks KEITH DUGGAN

Say one thing for Blighty: they do know how to honour their sports traditions. After another shimmering Wimbledon tournament, England’s fascination with small ball sports continues, what with Tom Watson turning the years back at Turnberry and at Lord’s MCC, the cricketers of England and Australia are locked into their eternal wrestling match for the mysterious contents of the Ashes urn.

The term “Ashes” calls to mind any number of connotations, not least the scene which constituted possibly the only genuinely funny moment in the 1980s alternative comedy, The Young Ones, when Neil, the mournful hippy, standing graveside at a funeral, breaks into a little boogie and sings Bowie’s “fun to funky” prompted by the priest beginning his “Ashes to ashes . . .” blessing.

It must have been around that time – 1984ish – when that dreary little series was at the apex of its popularity the BBC began broadcasting the television series Bodyline. To some, the term “cricket drama” must seem like a contradiction. Originally made in New Zealand and revolving around the notorious Ashes series of 1933, at its heart was one of the great sports controversies of all time.

For those of us who grew up in the 1980s, it always seemed as if the English believed their cricket team represented their last symbol of greatness. The national football team was, at that period, something of a dark joke and the domestic game, from Heysel onwards, on the verge of descending into hellish grimness. But the cricketers were the ones who could lead the BBC six o’clock news. The mere aesthetics of cricket – the whites, the pavilion and the rhythm had the power to carry viewers back to the vanished land of Housman.

Ian Botham’s Ashes is rightly celebrated as one of the enduring heroic feats of England’s sporting history but it is forgotten he did perform them in some sort of moral vacuum. England was in a state of anarchy then, as if Johnny Lydon’s plaintive screams had been prophetic. 1981 was the year of the race riots in Brixton, Toxteth and Moss Side, of the Hunger Strikes, of the Yorkshire Ripper trials, of the rubbish collection strikes.

England was bleak and stinking and it was against that backdrop that Botham stepped up, bold as Arthurian legend – but with peroxide blond touches – to restore something of the old glories. It was Botham on the cricket field who made England feel good about itself and over the subsequent summers of that decade, it always seemed as if English cricket was on the verge of some international coup or catastrophe on the far flung tours of the West Indies or the other former colonies for whom the game was one of the few inheritances to be appreciated.

The story of the 1933 Ashes was revived by that television series and although it centred around the treatment dished out to Australia’s cricket god, Don Bradman, the most compelling characters turned out to be Douglas Jardine, the aloof, single-minded captain who was raised through public schools via India and Larwood, the Nottingham lad who left a career working in the coal mines because of his uncannily fast and accurate ability to bowl a cricket ball.

Jardine devised the “fast leg theory”, in which the ball was bowled short so that it bounced high towards the body of the batsman. It was designed to highlight a weakness Jardine intuited had yet to be exposed in Bradman’s game. Larwood was the on-field assassin in Jardine’s notorious plan: the injuries suffered by Australians Bill Woodfull (above the heart) and Bert Olfield (head) caused a diplomatic incident and, in front of an outraged Australia, Bradman was spared nothing of Larwood’s blurred, insolent deliveries.

Larwood always delighted that one of his bowls got “the Don” in such a tizzy that it caught him “on the arse”, The Bodyline method was successful: England won the series 4-1 and Larwood took 33 wickets – causing such stress to his bowling arm he injured himself in the process.

Jardine set an example of contemptuous indifference to the reaction of the Australian team and public. Larwood travelled home alone ahead of the touring party to discover his bowling would render him England’s most notorious man – at least until Edward VIII took up the baton two years later.

His status quickly shifted from curiosity to outcast and, steadfastly refusing to sign a letter of apology to the MCC for his actions in that Ashes series (“I have nothing to apologise for”), he was never selected for England again. His career was over at 28 and although he played for Nottingham for several years afterwards, the Bodyline incident came to define his life.

His decision to move his family to the gentle glamour of Blackpool, where he opened a sweetshop, seems almost like an exercise in escapism in its own right. As it turned out, his life took a dramatic turn when Jack Fingleton, an Australian cricketer turned batsman, showed up to interview him and persuaded to emigrate to the very country that had made him notorious. Larwood lived in Sydney for the remainder of his life.

It is said his attempts to visit the dressingrooms at the Sydney Oval when England were touring in the 1950s resulted in the door being closed in his face. To officialdom, he remained a disgrace. But to those with souls, he was something else entirely: “A giant of my imagination” was how Michael Parkinson describes him in a wonderful tribute written in July 1995, a month after Larwood died.

“Parky” had the privilege of lunching with Larwood in more recent years. “He seemed uncomfortable in his suit, as if it was his Sunday best, his trilby hat was at a jaunty angle and he was smoking a cigarette which he cupped in the palm of his hand as if shielding it from a wind.” The company drank wine, apart from Larwood, who had beer. “I always drank a pint when I was bowling,” he said.

The Nottingham accent still rang clear and he retained the flinty intelligence, and the belief that he had done nothing wrong – that he had simply followed instructions from his captain. His affection and respect for Jardine – who died in the 1950s was as strange as it was unwavering: here were two men born into utterly different but wholly English circumstances who forged not only a close friendship through cricket but a mutual antipathy for the barons who controlled the game.

Larwood showed Parkinson a silver ashtray he had brought to their meeting bearing the inscription: ‘To a great bowler from a grateful captain, DR Jardine.’ There is something magnificent about the story of a boy destined for the underground life – “Down the mine I dreamed of cricket. I bowled imaginary balls in the dark” – ending up in happy exile simply because he had the courage not to buckle, to persevere with what was right. They gave him an MBE in 1993 but that honour was insufficient when it came to claiming him and Larwood was buried in Australia.

He lived in the country for 40 years without ever burying the hatchet with Don Bradman, who rarely commented on that turbulent series. But all of cricket – and all of England – is locked into the gripping and somehow sad story of Harold Larwood.

But as Australia and England knuckle down to another Ashes series, Larwood looms large in its history and he has become a son of both lands.