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Warwick Armstrong – Part 2 – with Gideon Haigh
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Gideon Haigh joins host Tom Ford in discussing the life and career of Australian cricket giant Warwick Armstrong. In Part 2, they dissect Warwick's Test debut, his adoption of leg theory on English wickets, and his numerous run-ins with the cricket establishment.
ABOUT GIDEON HAIGH:
Gideon Haigh has written close to 50 books and contributed to more than 100 publications, including The Times of London, The Guardian, The Times of India and The Australian. His 2001 biography The Big Ship: Warwick Armstrong and the Making of Modern Cricket was awarded the Jack Pollard Trophy.
CREDITS:
Presenter & Producer: Tom Ford
All music used in podcast comes from the University of California Santa Barbara’s remarkable collection of wax cylinder’s from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which are free to download and use. You can donate to the upkeep of these recordings via their website.
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Transcript
Introduction to Warwick Armstrong with Gideon Hague
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome to part two of this episode on the great Australian all-rounder Warwick Armstrong with his biographer Gideon Hague. My name is Tom Ford. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform so you'll never miss an episode.
Warwick Armstrong's Early Success and Test Debut
00:00:34
Speaker
returning to the early part of his career, he finds success at state level or even the pre-runner to state, I suppose, playing for the colonies. And he eventually makes his debut in the second test of the 1901-02 series against
00:00:55
Speaker
Archie McLaren's visiting English side at the MCG. It's a remarkable match for many reasons. Reggie Duff also makes his test debut and happens to make a test century. But it's a remarkable match. And this is something another aspect of the Golden Age I love, is when you look at scorecards,
00:01:21
Speaker
If you look at scorecards today, they're very regular, I suppose, and consistent. You know that David Warren's going to open and, you know, Steve Smith's always going to come in at, say, number four. But with this match, if you were to look solely at the scorecard, you suddenly see in the second innings, Clem Hill coming at seven, Victor Trump at eight.
00:01:46
Speaker
Monty Noble at nine, Reggie Duff, who was normally an opening batsman at 10, and Warwick Armstrong comes in at 11.
The Art of Captaincy on Uncovered Pitches
00:01:55
Speaker
This is all to do with a sticky wicket, or at least playing in the eras of uncovered pitches, which is so foreign to modern cricket fans these days.
00:02:09
Speaker
There was a real art in captaincy back then, wasn't there Gideon, in terms of reshaping the batting order to give your batsman the best opportunity to succeed. Yes, yeah, and to sometimes delay their coming in, in order that a pitch might improve.
00:02:30
Speaker
It's a remarkable test match. Australia made 112. England were bowled out on a sticky for 61. And Australia reversed its order, basically, in that second innings. Hugh Trumbull comes in to open the batting with Joe Darling. And the tail enders are sent in first to buy time for the batters coming in lower down. Yeah, Clem Hill gets 99, batting at number seven.
00:02:54
Speaker
And as you say, Reggie Duff and Warwick Armstrong put on 120 for the last wicket to create for Australia an unassailable lead.
00:03:09
Speaker
This was one of the things that Warwick would later stress in his critique of later cricket, how much cricket lost as a result of moving into an era of doped and covered pitches. That's why he was insistent
00:03:26
Speaker
on Victor Trumper being the best player he'd never seen, even though his era spanned Donald Bradman as well. He just said that the versatility required of cricketers
Armstrong's Stubbornness and Principles
00:03:38
Speaker
in that pre-war period set a task for batters and for bowlers that just made them better all-round cricketers.
00:03:50
Speaker
He finds success obviously in that series and he's then selected to tour England in the 1902 series, which is probably where he forms that opinion of Trump as the greatest batsman because it's a particularly wet season and Trump just dominates when most others fail. But during that series is when an incident occurs
00:04:16
Speaker
that is one of the first signs we get of Warwick and his, I suppose, stubbornness and highly principled way of doing things, is that during that series there are comments made in an English newspaper
00:04:36
Speaker
which later turns out to have been made by Jack Worrell, former Australian cricketer, saying that on the 1899 tour, everyone knew that Monte Noble was a chucker. Effectively, that's what he's saying. The Australian players find out pretty swiftly that these comments were made by Worrell.
00:04:58
Speaker
who at the time was Warwick Armstrong's Victorian captain. On returning to Australia he refuses to play in the same side as Warrall and it escalates, and this is the short version, it escalates to the point where
00:05:15
Speaker
it effectively ruins Worrell's cricket career. Is this typical Warwick behavior? And do you think this is who he was as a person, someone who would just stubbornly refuse to play cricket with his own captain based on the fact of some comments he made?
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah, don't leave out here that Warhol, I think, also cast aspersions on Jack Zawander's action as well, who was a member of that 1902 team, and they both refused to play with Warhol. I think, yes, it is a reflection of Warhol's character, that incipient militants that we can see there, but I think it's also to do with the sheer
00:06:07
Speaker
replenishness of that generation of players.
Conflict with Cricket Authorities
00:06:10
Speaker
Don't forget that when players went on tour, they were not just teammates. They were commercial partners. They were, at the end of the tour, they would separate the tour proceeds. So they were partners as well as playing in the same team. They were commercial co-venturers.
00:06:34
Speaker
So that inevitably leads to a tremendous sense of collegiality and a kind of a one, touch one, touch all attitude. And there could be no more serious aspersion cast on a player that their action was unfair. I think you're beginning to see the outlines of the attitude that Australian players took when the
00:06:59
Speaker
Australian Board of Control emerged in 1905 and tried by stealth to take over management of the game. The players stuck together through thick and thin. It's remarkable how they remained shoulder to shoulder through all those disputes from 1905 through to the First World War. And not one of them breaks ranks. So Warwick is perhaps the most stubborn of all.
00:07:29
Speaker
But it's an attitude that he's inherited from the likes of Joe Darling, Monty Noble, and even Victor Trump. He looked up to them as, Warwick looked up to them as cricketers, but he also looked up to them as men.
00:07:44
Speaker
That's a fair point. You've mentioned this already, but I'd just like to return briefly to the infamous Leg Theory bowling that he adopts in the following tour of England in 1905, where, as you say, he took one for 67 of 52 overs. Leg Theory today is largely monopolised by
00:08:10
Speaker
Douglas Jardine and Lawwood during the Body Lines series, which was...
Strategic Use of Leg Theory Bowling
00:08:15
Speaker
uh leg theory to the extreme it was a very aggressive type bowling um you know bounces largely on the batsman's uh top of the shoulder to intimidate them um but leg theory in warrick's time was not that was it it was it was literally bowling um almost uh unplayable deliveries down the leg side in a slow way almost
00:08:44
Speaker
in the hope that you would bore the batsman out into making a false stroke. Is that a fair assessment?
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's not a bad assessment. I mean, don't forget that either Jadine nor Lawwood agreed with the designation body line. They called it League Theory as well. And they said that it was an ancient art. It went back to Armstrong. And even before Armstrong, there were bowlers who pursued that particular line. It was what you can't forget about cricket in the Golden Age is that
00:09:21
Speaker
although test matches in Australia were timeless, test matches in England were three days. So if you could bowl 52 overs, one for 67, you're a good chance of slowing down the game and potentially neutralizing it. I think there were there were three draws in that in that 1905 series. And I think the Australians did understand that they had a fairly weak attack.
00:09:46
Speaker
and that it was pretty important to keep the game from running away from them. And Warwick was an important part of that initiative. In the end, it didn't avail them because they lost the ashes. But it was a tactic of its time. We're talking pre the sweep shot here. There's no such thing as a sweep shot. Probably the closest thing you've got is the pull drive.
00:10:07
Speaker
The sweep shot doesn't really spread until after the First World War. I don't think you see an illustration of a sweep shot in an instructional book until DJ Knight's book. I think that's the first example. So there isn't an obvious countermeasure to Ball's Bold on or outside the line of League Stumps.
00:10:29
Speaker
And of course batsmen I think in those days were more limited. The game gloried in the offside strokes and certainly as far as English amateur batting was concerned that the leg side strokes did not come as naturally and were looked upon with some disapproval.
00:10:48
Speaker
It was the crossbat village greener who hit towards the leg side. It was the pedigreed English amateur who explored the quadrant in front of the wicket between point and mid-off.
00:11:01
Speaker
That's a good point, and it's a point stressed by my previous guest in Wilton, CB Fry's biographer, who makes the point that it's someone to the ability of Fry and also Ranji, who are really some of the first amateur batsmen
00:11:22
Speaker
to start using leg side strokes and to not be worried so much about the preconceived notions that amateurs shouldn't be playing on the on the on side as batsmen. And so this period that Armstrong's emerging is also when leg side strokes begin to emerge
00:11:48
Speaker
for amateur batsmen. It's really interesting, I suppose, and important to put that in context.
00:11:55
Speaker
Gideon your or it gives them the opportunity to develop those strokes. Well, exactly. Yeah, exactly. But you're right. I mean, if you look at, say, Beldam and Fry's great batsman series, predominantly the strokes are offside and or down the wicket. There's a few, you know, there's photos, of course, of Ranji.
00:12:18
Speaker
playing wristy shots, leg glances, etc. And the what was the famous was it the the draw shot or something he developed through the legs. Yeah, yeah. But but you know, very few pull shots. And it really took batsman who we would classify as aggressive and predominantly Australian batsman like a darling or a Clem Hill.
00:12:46
Speaker
to demonstrate those strokes. Gideon, your book is really still to this day a starting point for many researchers who want to know about this faction between the Australian cricketers and the Board of Control, which emerges, as you say, around 1905. There's a huge lead up to it.
00:13:13
Speaker
back and forth between players there's rumblings happening. Joe Darling is of course probably the main player representing the players being the captain. Monty Noble steps up as well which forces him to be
00:13:30
Speaker
band from Captain in New South Wales, et cetera, for a while. And then, of course, it reaches its climax with Clem Hill, who almost throws a selector out of a window in 1912. Warwick Armstrong is largely a bystander through all this. He's obviously on the side of the players. But all through this, he's really not having a huge involvement. He is, of course, having
00:13:58
Speaker
I wouldn't necessarily, I know, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that. He's certainly, he's not one of the New South Wales players who's recruited by the Melbourne Cricket Club to play in that putative 1906-7 Ashes tour that never takes place. You know, it's Noble, Crump and Duff, Carter, Carter, Hopkins, and a few others, but they don't need to sign him because they've already got him. You know, if Melbourne Cricket Club has a plan to stage an inbound tour of Australia by an England team,
00:14:26
Speaker
Warwick's going to be part of it. Warwick's going to be front and center in it. And when the Australian team is talking about, there are discussions about the circumstances under which the Australian team will go to England in 1909, Warwick is right in the middle of that. Warwick's one of the players who refuses to sign his contract. Warwick is so strongly opposed to Peter McAllister's place on the tour as a player and a treasurer.
00:14:56
Speaker
that he won't play in games that Macalester is playing in England. The players successfully isolated the first spy placed in their camp in 1909 and Warwick gives Macalester nothing and he will not accept the dominion of the board.
00:15:19
Speaker
And he's, you know, Monty Noble falls by the by the wayside in Monty Noble. The acrimony is too much for mild-mannered Monty. Clem Hill doesn't go to England in 1909. He can't hack it either. But Armstrong goes and he goes under his own flag, as it were. You know, he's sort of unconquerable and dominant. You know, he bowls a match-winning spell, gets six for 35 in that in that Lord's test.
00:15:49
Speaker
He's the most formidable personality and he's the one who never bows before the authority of the board, even if it means him not going to England in 1912. It's not only the board that's mashing against him, it's the Victorian Cricket Association who have a very, very troubled relationship with him throughout. They're constantly trying to, they know that he's the best player in Victoria, but they,
00:16:20
Speaker
He's evasive about selection. He's censored by the VCA. They nearly ban him permanently in a dispute over expenses in 1907-8. When there are the meetings ahead of the 1909 tour of England, Warwick stands up and he says, what's the board going to do with the money? The players are taking all the hard knocks and making all the money. We should have a little idea of where the money is going. In 1910-11, he has a
00:16:48
Speaker
rumble with the VCA about the player's entitlement to complementary tickets. In 1112 it's revealed the VCA is machinating against Armstrong's captaincy. In 1213 they actually remove him as captain.
00:17:03
Speaker
He's replaced by a stooge, Arnie Seitz for a season. In 1913-14 the VCA reappoint him as captain and then he resigns at lunchtime on the first day of a shield game when they declined to make the appointment permanent.
00:17:20
Speaker
And then he comes back in 1415 and he leads Victoria to victory in the Sheffield Shield. Maybe just to annoy everyone. He's a fantastic Refusnik. I mean, I can't imagine sharing a dressing room or even sharing a drink with him, but boy oh boy.
00:17:40
Speaker
He was tough. It's almost as though the entire forces of Australian cricket are arranged against him and he will not bow before them.
Resistance to Australian Board of Control
00:18:03
Speaker
Where do you think this, I keep using the sort of the phrase, you know, issue with authority. Where do you think this actually comes from with Warwick? Was there something in his early years? Was his father a particular authoritarian? Was there something that you can trace back to where this personality comes from?
00:18:27
Speaker
Well, well, I think I think you're making a mistake there in the sense that you're looking backwards, you're looking at the Australian Board of Control through the in the context of cricket Australia, when it's been the all powerful government in Australian crickets in 1905. It was a fledgling body in 1905 that arrogated powers to itself. Yeah, it's and it's very.
00:18:56
Speaker
shrewdly marshalled by Billy McElhern and Ernie Bean. But, you know, it's every reason to think that if it was opposed with sufficient unanimity and forcefulness, that it would go the same way as the Australasian Cricket Council.
00:19:16
Speaker
the first attempt to form a national cricket government in Australia that failed in 1900 because the cricketers basically wouldn't accept its authority. So in some respects, you know,
00:19:32
Speaker
Armstrong would have regarded himself as the authority. The players would have regarded themselves as central to the game. They would have regarded the board as the rebel alliance to be put down, to be put in its place. And it just so happens that they're outmaneuvered by some very clever, very able and surprisingly young
00:19:58
Speaker
young middle-class professionals in Bean and Mankle Home.
00:20:05
Speaker
And by the time the game is reconstituted after the First World War, all the militants of Warwick's period have gone except for Warwick. Warwick is the last survivor of that generation of the player-centric game. And he continues to resist. He's a state within a state in Australian cricket through 1920-21.
00:20:29
Speaker
And when he went, I'll bet that the administrators of his time said goodbye and good riddance. Thank God we've seen him off.
00:20:39
Speaker
It's really the closing of the Golden Age, even though we sort of class that as with the breaking or the outbreak of the First World War. But you're right. And it is extraordinary that through all the issues he has with Victorian and Australian cricket authorities, he continues after the war and has great success. It is a remarkable story.
00:21:04
Speaker
Gideon, how are we? He does, but he has great, he has great success in spite of rather than because of the administration. Yes. Because when he's appointed captain in November, not in 20, they only point him for one test and it's only on the odd vote. And, you know, they basically they suffer him. They know he's great. They know he's the only man for the job, but they hate having him as captain. Right. It's fascinating. In February 1921,
00:21:33
Speaker
The VCA suspends him for withdrawing from a Sheffield Shield match on the match morning because he's injured without informing the team manager. And there's a protest outside the MCG where 10,000 people turn up to protest against the decision by the VCA. That's unprecedented. And it's unequaled in Australian cricket. We didn't get that in the case of Sandpapergate. We had a virtual mob rather than a physical mob.
00:22:02
Speaker
But it was astounding how resilient Warwick was in the face of administrative overreach. Just getting 10,000 protesters at a state game is extraordinary enough. But no, you're absolutely right. Gideon, how will we
00:22:20
Speaker
today meant to assess the big six. So the big six are the six cricketers who refused to tour England in 1912 for the triangular series, which possibly worked in their favour because it was an ill-fated series due to weather and poor planning. And South Africa weren't as competitive as the administrators
00:22:46
Speaker
So the big six were Clem Hill, Victor Trumper, Hanson Carter, Tibby Cotter and Vernon Bransford along with Warwick. Should we view them as martyrs today or were they just agitators?
00:23:05
Speaker
I think the important thing is to see 1912 in the context of 1906, which is actually probably in hindsight, the more significant dispute. It's where the board basically prevent the Melbourne Cricket Club from organizing cricket tours the way that they had in the past. Previously, the MCC had been the center of authority for cricket in Australia.
00:23:31
Speaker
the board wishes to usurp their power and they do so by basically ensuring that the MCC cannot get access to the Sydney cricket ground for that summer and then they I think successfully petition the Victorian Government
00:23:51
Speaker
to change the Melbourne Cricket Ground trustees to jeopardize the Melbourne Cricket Club's tenure at the at the MCG and eventually the Melbourne Cricket Club had to retire from the field licking its wounds and from that point on
00:24:09
Speaker
I think the players were exposed that they'd lost their big ally. They lost their big organizing party with with whom they basically run Australian cricket for the previous 15 or so years by sort of an entente Cordial.
00:24:27
Speaker
And the last vestige of player power was the right to choose their own manager for a cricket tour. It was a small right, but it was a residual right. There'd been a fight over it in 1909, where the players had appointed Frank Leyva over and above the board's appointment of Peter McAllister.
00:24:53
Speaker
McAllister had signally failed in his duty to act as treasurer because basically Leyva wouldn't give him access to the to the books of account or the proceeds of the tour. So that first administrative encroachment on the players finances fails. But in 1912, they're taking no chances. They appoint George Crouch as manager. They refuse to accept the players right to appoint Frank Leyva again. And the players go, well, that's it.
00:25:21
Speaker
That's it. We've already been stripped of the right to choose our own captain. They'd lost that right in 1910. The board had taken over what had previously been a player's prerogative of appointing their own captain on tours. Now they were losing the right to choose their manager and that big six decided that they would rather not tour under those circumstances, the players that you enumerate before.
00:25:45
Speaker
But it had been a policy of pinpricks by the board since 1906, and 1912 was kind of the last step in that process. Perhaps it was an inevitable final confrontation. It would have been interesting if, of course, it would have been interesting if the First World War had never happened, but exactly how Australian cricket would have fared had those players continued a little bit longer.
00:26:13
Speaker
whether the Australian public would have been satisfied with the circumstances of 1912, whether the players would have been able to reassert their authority. We will never know. Probably by the time the First World War comes around, the Board's authority is ensconced. Warwick is, of course, appointed as Australian captain on the
00:26:40
Speaker
tour of South Africa, not in 1415 that never takes place. So presumably fences had been mended sufficiently that Warwick could accept the board dominion there, but certainly by 19 2021, he's the last Mohican. He's the last member of his tribe. He's raging against the dying of the light, but it's a one man battle by 19 2021.
00:27:11
Speaker
to be for a long, long time. Ring a chime. Sweetheart, mine and I be just as true to you as to love and white and blue. Though I'm gone for a long, long time.
Influence on Modern Cricket
00:27:29
Speaker
I just want to finish Gideon with a couple of questions about Warwick's legacy and how we should view him today. For the modern cricket fan, if they know anything about Warwick Armstrong, it's probably his
00:27:45
Speaker
enormous cricket shirt which is on display in Melbourne and this humongous figure I said both physically and figuratively before, you know, the images of him as literally the big ship, you know, executing that drive, that photo of him. Do you think his early years are unfairly forgotten? I mean, reading your book,
00:28:13
Speaker
That's when a lot of these issues are kicking off and it's fascinating to see the back and forth with the establishment, but also, as we mentioned before, his adoption of leg theory, his wonderful early cricket feats. Do you think we've largely forgotten the early Warwick years?
00:28:38
Speaker
He's not an easy cricketer to define in the way that a Trump or a Hill is naturally identified with the Golden Age. That span of his career tends to confuse onlookers. What sort of relationship do we have to the 1920s? We barely understand that. That seems even longer ago in some respects than the Golden Age. How do we remember him?
00:29:07
Speaker
He's the arch competitor. He incarnates many of the attitudes that we have subsequently begun to come to accept about Australian cricket, that we play cricket hard. There are no holds barred on the cricket pitch.
00:29:26
Speaker
Warwick is even associated with incidents of sledging. He attempts a mancad in a Sheffield Shield game in 1914-15, unsuccessfully. If he'd managed to run Eric Bull out in that game against New South Wales at the SEG in 1914, we might have been calling it an Armstrong rather than a mancader.
00:29:48
Speaker
He once appeals for a timed out dismissal in a grade game in Melbourne because the opening batsman for the opposition took too long to come to the wickets at the end of a day's play. He's constantly thinking about how to win and any trick will do.
00:30:12
Speaker
I don't think he's, he's a cheat, but he's, you know, he's definitely. He wants, he wants it all. Yeah, he's, he's uncompromising and an unapologetic about saying so. And look you're right you're right about the size the size is kind of you look at him and you think how on earth.
00:30:33
Speaker
could a man like that have played cricket in an era when today where every cricketer is a gym junkie and self-like and subsisting on a diet of macrobiotic rice. But in Warwick's era,
00:30:54
Speaker
cricket grounds were probably even bigger than they are today. The pitches were still 22 yards. The days were still long. The days were still hot. And if you look at Warwick in 19, 2021, from October to October, he scores 2,282 runs at 56. He bowls 5,420 deliveries and takes 117 wickets at 15.5 in that year.
00:31:22
Speaker
and he wins eight test matches out of the ten in which he's captain.
00:31:27
Speaker
I mean, they're astonishing figures. Look, we're a statistical age. If you can't apprehend Warwick by any other means, look at his statistics and they are absolutely phenomenal. It's a good point. And I'm just reminded of one last tale of Warwick, which fits his personality perfectly. I forget which tour it was, maybe 1905, possibly 1909, where there was still the practice or the custom of allowing a bowler to have a practice delivery or
00:31:57
Speaker
to practice deliveries for as long as they want and I think for something like 40 minutes Warwick is running up and down and practicing his bowling technique while the poor batsman just have to wait there
00:32:13
Speaker
And of course there was Frank Woolley on his test to boo. Yeah. Yeah. And it's in and the story is recounted in Frank Woolley's book, King of Games. It's pretty astounding. The crowd is booing. The crowd know exactly what's going on. It is gamesmanship by any other name. Psychology. And yet it happens in this period, the golden age of cricket.
00:32:34
Speaker
which we identify with the purest of motivations and the highest standards of sportsmanship. Things are never quite as they seem. And finally Gideon, what would Warwick Armstrong think of modern cricket? Day-night cricket, white ball cricket, women's cricket? Do you think he would have been a supporter of modern cricket or would he have clung to the traditions of the game?
00:33:05
Speaker
He'd have liked the money and he'd have liked the volume of cricket because this is a man who could never get enough of cricket. He would play anywhere, anytime against any opposition. He loved the game and the game loved him back. I think, what would you think now? He would complain about the lack of players
00:33:31
Speaker
versatility. That generation were very wedded to the idea that uncovered wickets made for better players. And that when the balance between bat and ball was disturbed, then something went out of the game. Warwick was very critical of cricket between the wars. He felt the quality had fallen off a great deal in the sort of Bradman Ponsford
00:33:59
Speaker
era of doped pitches and high scores. So he was very loyal to his own generation. And he would probably feel a little bit the same about very flat wickets today and very high scores. I think like any great cricketer, he would adapt.
00:34:19
Speaker
I think we tend to think of historical periods as too distinct. Basically, the core skills, even if they're perhaps wider these days than they were before, there's a greater number of strokes and a greater variety of deliveries. Given the same circumstances and the same opportunities, great players would be great players in any era. And Warwick had the desire to dominate and the desire to win
00:34:48
Speaker
that goes to the very heart of modern cricket. That's why I call this book Warwick Armstrong and the Making of Modern Cricket. He anticipates a whole lot of things that we think of as much newer than they are.
00:35:02
Speaker
Well, Gideon, thanks so much for taking the time and effort to revisit Warwick, as it were, after all these years. Your book, The Big Ship, Warwick Armstrong and the Making of Modern Cricket from 2001 has a lot of fans out there still to this day. And I'm sure they're listening today and would have cherished hearing you talk about it. So thank you so much.
00:35:28
Speaker
Well, it can't be that many fans because I've seen the royalty statements, but maybe they borrowed it from the library. Maybe it's got more fans than actual buyers. Well, I'm hoping after this podcast, sales are going to skyrocket. So, you know, we'll see what happens. But thank you very much. OK. All right. Thanks, Tom. My pleasure. That's all from me. My name is Tom Ford. Remember to follow or subscribe to this podcast so you'll never miss an episode. Thanks for listening.
00:36:04
Speaker
Bye!