Ashes Archive: We look at the 1970/71 series

Sussex paceman put cutting edge into Illy’s ruthless 1970/71 tourists

Paul Edwards continues his look into the Ashes archive by featuring only the second group of England tourists to regain the Ashes Down Under, matching the feat of Douglas Jardine in the infamous Bodyline series in the 1930s

It is rare for an Australian umpire to receive a full-page obituary in an English newspaper.Yet last February that honour of sorts was accorded by The Times to Lou Rowan, whose stern countenance gazed out at readers, some of whom probably wondered what exactly this bloke had done to deserve such attention.

A smaller, grainier picture, inset below the large mugshot, may have helped clear the fog of 46 years. It shows Rowan handing out an official warning to England’s John Snow for intimidatory bowling after a ball had skulled Terry Jenner in the first innings of the seventh Ashes Test.

Snow is mouthing a reply which is plainly not along the lines of: “Quite right, umpire. I regret overstepping the mark there.” To the right of Rowan is the England skipper Ray Illingworth, who was rarely in a mood to appease anyone. In fact, Illingworth was asking Rowan under what Law he was warning Snow, given that this was the first short-pitched ball he had bowled at Jenner and it wasn’t a bouncer anyway. It is a view he still holds.

And now, for some readers, the mist has almost cleared. A few might have memories of half-hour monochrome highlights programmes, the first such broadcasts from Australia. There may also be vague images of Geoff Boycott and John Edrich batting as well as even they ever did for England; give it a moment and there might also be recollections of Illingworth being chaired off the ground by his players after England had won the Ashes 2-0. It had been the longest rubber in Test history.

Above all, though, we should remember Snow, a tousled-haired fast bowler, loping up to the wicket before gathering himself into one of the great delivery strides and taking 31 wickets, 22 of them belonging to top-six batsmen. This was Snow’s finest series, one in which his ability to make the ball rear from just short of a length had Australian batsmen hopping about. YouTube helps us once again. For here is Snow making Ashley Mallett drop his bat in pain after being struck on the glove once more.

“Illingworth’s side in 1970-71 were mentally the toughest English side I played against,” said Greg Chappell. “He subjected us to mental intimidation by aggressive field placings, and physical intimidation by constant use of his pace attack, ably led by one of the best fast bowlers of my experience, John Snow

“Winning to Illingworth was something he expected of himself and demanded of his team.”

Yet there was a moment in that seventh Test when Illingworth came close to surrendering the prize. Soon after Snow had been warned by Rowan, he was grabbed on the boundary edge by a spectator who had apparently made free with the fortified cordials. The bowler detached himself but when bottles and cans were thrown onto the outfield, Illingworth took his team off the SCG.

Richie Benaud, who had described the England captain as behaving like a “prima donna of a South American football side” when he was protesting about Snow’s warning, now agreed with his action.

Rowan, on the other hand, was having none of it. He warned Illingworth that he would forfeit the game if he did not return to the field. When the cans had been cleared, the England players came back and four days later won the game by 62 runs, Illingworth taking three vital wickets on the last day. By then Snow was off the field with a broken finger, joining Boycott who had fractured his left arm. It was the sort of Test on which the spectators needed a rest day – now there’s a quaint notion – as much as the players.

The same might be said of the other five matches. For it was an Ashes series which saw John Edrich make 648 Test runs, nine fewer than Boycott, who finished with a tour aggregate of 1,535 runs and an average of 95.93. It was also the Australian summer when Greg Chappell, Rod Marsh and Dennis Lillee made their Test debuts. The trio noted England’s success with interest and resolved that things would be a trifle different in the future.

It was a series in which it was noted that none of the 98 Australian batsmen dismissed was given out lbw; journalists revisiting the matches still draw attention to this fact but rarely mention that there were only five leg before decisions against the Poms. It was a fine tour for the burly Australian opener, Keith Stackpole, whose 627 runs included plenty from hooks and cuts off Snow and the other seamers. And it was also the tour which saw the abandonment of the notional third Test at Melbourne and an extra game arranged without consulting the England players, who were eventually paid an extra match fee of £50.

“No captain of a touring team since DR Jardine nearly 40 years ago has had such a difficult task as Raymond Illingworth, leader of MCC in Australia in 1970-71,” began E.M Wellings in his assessment of the tour for the 1972 Wisden. That mention of Jardine was apposite, as Wellings probably knew. For while Illingworth and Jardine’s backgrounds were very different their approach to captaincy shared certain qualities: stubbornness, a fierce commitment to their players and a will to win which alarmed the establishment diplomats who managed their tours.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that since the end of the First World War only Jardine and Illingworth have skippered England sides which regained the Ashes in Australia.

Nor is it happenstance that both skippers were able to call on fast bowlers who were superior to any of their Australian opponents. Because for all the kindergarten threats spouted in advance of this winter’s Tests one curious contention has gone unnoticed. It is that English new-ball attacks seem to have been quite as effective as their opponents when it comes to injuring batsmen in Ashes series in Australia.

Set against Ray Lindwall’s sconing of Frank Tyson in 1954, Jeff Thomson’s rearrangement of David Lloyd’s crown jewels two decades later and Brett Lee’s bouncer through Alex Tudor’s helmet in 2002 can be set Harold Larwood’s deliveries to Bill Woodfull and Bertie Oldfield in the Bodyline tour and Bob Willis’ destruction of Rick McCosker’s jaw in the Centenary Test. And even before he felled Jenner, Snow had ushered Graham McKenzie out of Test cricket with a broken nose towards the end of the fourth Test.

Now let us agree at once that this is not a matter of which either set of supporters should be proud. One only had to see Lee’s reaction after Tudor sustained his injury to understand that the vast majority of quick bowlers have no wish to injure batsmen. Nevertheless, the management of fear and the development of a technique with which to play the bouncer are part of a cricketer’s training.

All the same it was a trifle surprising that Snow was the bowler handing out punishment that winter. For despite being the best English fast bowler of his generation, he was a cricketer at the mercy of his moods, occasionally listless when his captain needed a wicket yet roused when there was little at stake.

“Sometimes, on a routine day at Hove, nothing in him meets the eye at all, for more than any cricketer of comparable talent that I have seen, he seems able to switch off completely…” said Alan Ross in a profile written during the 1970/1 tour. “When called upon a pale ghostly presence goes through the motions and retires into his own cloud of unknowing.”

Snow was certainly an unconventional cricketer. He was, as the title of his autobiography admitted, something of a rebel, intolerant of authority and frequently not selected for England because he was not seen as a team player by those for whom obedience was everything. He was also a poet and one of the few cricketers whose tribute in Wisden includes a quote from the Book of Job.

“Man is born to trouble as sparks fly upwards and John Augustine Snow, poet,

Illingworth’s triumph was to coax the best out of a cricketer who knew there was more to life than cricket and who had no time for pompous authority

thinker, introvert would surely be one of the last to disagree,” wrote Basil Easterbrook when Snow was belatedly honoured as one of the Almanack’s Five Cricketers of the Year in 1973. He should have received the accolade a year earlier but barging over Sunil Gavaskar in the 1971 Lord’s Test hardly helped his case.

Illingworth’s triumph was to coax the best out of a cricketer who knew there was more to life than cricket and who had no time for pompous authority, whether in committee rooms or newspaper offices. Consider this from Snow’s poem Lord’s Test: “Yet reality crystallises / and the pressstretching / fidgeting, vulture-like waits / with the sound of sharpening carbon claws / for the fresh carcass of play.”

Few journalists picked over Snow’s cricket during that distant Ashes tour. Instead they saw a cricketer at the peak of his powers, a fast bowler who could make the ball move late off the seam and who possessed a wicked change of pace; also one who sent down relatively few bumpers. “I’ve a streak of hardness but I wouldn’t call it meanness,” Snow wrote. “The bouncer in my book is legitimate intimidation. If a batsman carpets me for four or hits me out of the ground he’s got to expect retribution and he should be able to handle it if he knows his technique. If he does not, he’s no business to be there.” It is a comment you might expect from any quick bowler worth his wages. Yet before long Snow could retreat quietly into his own world, one in which cricket mattered both very much and not at all. “The ultimate thing in life is to play for England,” said Basil D’Oliveira over dinner during a Test in 1972. “The ultimate thing in life is death,” replied Snow.