“TAKE THIS ONE.”

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20274, 7 April 1934, Page 9

“TAKE THIS ONE.”

Bodyline Intimidation in India. UMPIRE’S STATEMENT. “There will be some bobbing today!" “He will take this one!” Remarks such as these were made by Clark, the English fast bowler, while he was in action in India recently, according to Frank Tarrant, the umpire. Tarrant, in a letter from India to a Melbourne friend, asserts that D. R. Jardine, captain of the M.C.C. team, permitted Clark deliberately to bowl at the batsmen (says the Melbourne “ Herald ”). Tarrant, who is a former Victorian and Middlesex cricketer, umpired in the first and second Tests between the M.C.C. and India, but was dropped for the third. * “ Intimidation.” ** After seeing, from the close-up view of umpire, what Australians call bodyline, and what Englishmen call fast legtheory exploited in India,” he writes, “ I am definitely sure that Clark, with the sanction of Jardine, deliberately bowled at the batsman with the intention of intimidating him. p ** At Madras, it was so bad that Naomal, an Indian batsman, was knocked out from a blow on the head, and unable to take any further part in the match. Three stitches were inserted in his forehead. “ The Englishmen’s explanation,” Tarrant proceeds, “ was that the batsman snicked the ball. Even if he had not snicked it, it wofild have hit him on the head just the same, possibly with serious results, as it struck him only an inch from a vital part. “Again, when boiling to the Yuvuraj of Patiala, Clark tried the same methods. The crowd became very hostile, and, if he had knocked out the young Prince, I am sure the crowd would have rushed the ground. Jardine, clever that he is, to save any trouble, took Clark off after he had bowled only one over. To me that

was absolute proof that Clark was guilty of deliberately bowling at the man.” Gave Jardine Out I»bw. Pointing out that he upheld bodyline because of a misapprehension, when he returned to Australia last year, Tarrant, in his letter, explains that he did not see the matches in Australia, but had thought that the tactics were the same as those of F. R. Foster and G. H. Hirst. “ I was quite wrong,” writes Tarrant, “ and I must apologise to the Press and public of Australia for my mistake. “ Jardine waited until the day before the final Test to throw his bomb. I had umpired in the first and second Tests, and nothing was said after either of them—which was the right time for any objection. But on the eve of the third Test Jardine objected to my umpiring. “ I had had the audacity to give him out lbw in the match which the Englishmen lost at Benares. “I had been appointed by the Indian Board of Control, but Jardine apparently cared nothing for them. To avoid a quarrel with Jardine, so they told me, they gave way.” Defending his umpiring in the two Tests, Tarrant states: “I gave them a ‘real fair dinkuia- .go.’' Actually, I gave out more Inmfcfcyglayers than Englishmen. If I gave them out, whether they captains or not. lam not umpiring for a living. “ In England, the captains are always leaned to by the umpires, as at the end of. a match, the captains mark ‘ good ’ or * bad ’ against the umpire. At the end of the 3 r ear, on these reports, umpires are put off without any reason being given. As it is an umpire’s living, you can’t blame him if he favours the captains a little.” Tarrant says that he expects to visit Melbourne in April. In a letter to another friend, Tarrant says: “ Probably the fact that I am an Australian also influenced Jardine against me; I don’t think he likes Australians.”