AAfter just 100 years, the Spin, always the first to break the news, is finally able to reveal the details of one of the more extraordinary secrets in the history of English cricket. The story comes from the private family archives of former Surrey captain Percy Fender is bundled into a fascinating new documentary film. It has always been a mystery that Fender, who was described by Wisden as ‘the cleverest county captain of his generation’, was never chosen to manage England. After all these years, it now appears he has been blackmailed out of his job by a corrupt cricket official.
In a private audio recording made shortly before his death in 1985, Fender explains that in May 1924 he was approached “by a gentleman very well known in the cricketing world” who, during a conversation over two half bottles of champagne in Fender’s flat at the Adelphi, offered him to captain England for the 1924–25 Ashes tour. Fender was an amateur and had a day job as a wine merchant, which meant he had to arrange cover while he was away on the six-month tour. The “very famous” gentleman suggested he could do it for him.
“I preferred that idea,” says Fender, “and went straight to the point. I asked him how much he would like in terms of salary. After some thought, he said, ‘Of course I can’t accept a salary or a commission, but there’s nothing stopping me from paying a dividend on shares.'” Fender agreed and suggested that they “arrange a blank transfer for those shares so that I can take them back” once the dividend is paid. The ‘famous gentleman’ then told him he had the wrong idea.
“I asked him point-blank, ‘Is it this: that instead of giving you seven and a half percent of so many shares in exchange for your work between September and April while I’m away, you want to keep the shares forever for the future?’ He replied that he didn’t think I should look at it that way. I ended by telling him very bluntly that while I was perfectly willing to pay him for all the work he did for the company while I was away, I was not willing to bribe him by giving him that share of my company forever. Then he got up and said he had to go. And so I knew that not only was I not going to be England captain, I probably wouldn’t even tour.”
Fender played two Tests in June 1924, but was not picked for England again until 1929, when he returned for one final appearance.
Fender never revealed the identity of the blackmailer, but given his apparent influence it seems likely that he was one of the selection committees MCC used to select that Ashes team, which included three contemporary county players Peter Perrin, John Daniell and Jack Sharp, as well as MCC greats Henry Leveson-Gower, Sir Pelham Warner and Lord Harris, who repeatedly fell out with Fender over their differences over how the game should be run and played. Fender was a meritocrat and repeatedly challenged the old rules that enforced the strict separation between amateurs and professionals in the game.
On the field, Fender hit with joyful abandon. He still holds the record for the fastest century in the history of first-class cricket, achieved in just 35 minutes. He once hit 52 off 14 consecutive balls, and he bowled whatever his team needed. He enjoyed creative captaincy, and the film includes a remarkable story about a match against Essex in which nine members of the Surrey team arrived late for the day’s game, so Fender and another played 20 minutes of championship cricket with just two of them, taking turns to bowl and keep wicket. Off the field, he was a fighter pilot and adventurer who survived more than one near-death experience.
The decision to omit Fender from the 1924-25 Ashes team would ultimately have a profound effect on the history of the game. Not playing for England, Fender started covering them as a journalist. He ended up reporting on the 1928-29 Ashes tour, where he saw a young Donald Bradman for the first time. Fender could never lead England against Bradman’s Australia, but his protégé, Douglas Jardine, would. The story has always been that it was Fender who helped Jardine devise the Bodyline tactics that England used to beat Bradman’s Australia in 1932-33.
The archives shed new light on how Bodyline came about. In it, Fender says he received two letters from Australian journalists he had befriended while on tour in 1928, both of whom told him that Australia’s senior batsmen had made a plan on how to deal with England’s fast bowlers, Harold Larwood, Bill Voce, Bill Bowes and Gubby Allen. They planned to stand in front of their stumps and play all the short pitch bowling on the leg side. Fender even describes how Jardine asked him to show him the letters before the tour so they could talk about them.
There was nothing new about short, fast bowling aimed at the body. The ‘leg theory’ goes back at least 50 years. What made Bodyline different was that Jardine trapped the batters with a cordon of catchers on the leg side.
But this was, says Fender, a direct response to Australia’s own tactics. A few days before the first test, Jardine wrote to Fender from Australia. “I’ve already been forced to have five men on the leg side for the quickies,” he wrote, “and it rather looks like I’ll have to have the whole lot on the leg side by the time the first Test starts.” And as Jardine later put it in another letter, “those who stand in front of their wickets and do not play the ball with their bat usually get hit”. Fender, this extraordinary man, forgave the men who ran English cricket, but he never insulted anyone who said he and Jardine had done anything wrong.
The documentary is being made with support from Surrey County Cricket Club, and the team behind it are looking for a final round of investment to complete the project. You can contact andy.bull@theguardian.com if you would like to know more.
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