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Bodyline Autopsy: The Full Story of the Most Sensational Test Cricket Series: England Vs. Australia 1932-3
In 1932, England’s cricket team, led by the haughty Douglas Jardine, had the fastest bowler in the world: Harold Larwood. Australia boasted the most prolific batsman the game had ever seen: the young Don Bradman. He had to be stopped. The leg-side bouncer onslaught inflicted by Larwood and Bill Voce, with a ring of fieldsmen waiting for catches, caused an outrage that reverberated to the back of the stands and into the highest levels of government. Bodyline, as this infamous technique came to be known, was repugnant to the majority of cricket-lovers. It was also potentially lethal – one bowl fracturing the skull of Australian wicketkeeper Bert Oldfield – and the technique was outlawed in 1934.
After the death of Don Bradman in 2001, one of the most controversial events in cricketing history – the Bodyline technique - finally slid out of living memory. Over seventy years on, the 1932-33 Ashes series remains the most notorious in the history of Test cricket between Australia and England.
David Frith’s gripping narrative has been acclaimed as the definitive book on the whole saga: superbly researched and replete with anecdotes, Bodyline Autopsy is a masterly anatomy of one of the most remarkable sporting scandals.
After the death of Don Bradman in 2001, one of the most controversial events in cricketing history – the Bodyline technique - finally slid out of living memory. Over seventy years on, the 1932-33 Ashes series remains the most notorious in the history of Test cricket between Australia and England.
David Frith’s gripping narrative has been acclaimed as the definitive book on the whole saga: superbly researched and replete with anecdotes, Bodyline Autopsy is a masterly anatomy of one of the most remarkable sporting scandals.
480 pages, Paperback
First published November 15, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
November 16, 2020
Wow, this is good. So much detail. Who would've thought 90 year old commentaries on cricket matches could be so interesting? The last chapter where we are told what all the players did with the rest of their lives was a bit superfluous, but I guess it was necessary to know in regard to Bradman, Jardine and Larwood, so it would maybe seem unfair on everyone else to leave them out...
It really doesn't seem fair (or, cricket as it is customary to say) to bowl very fast at a batsman's head and chest on the leg side, while overloading that side of the field so they fear for their safety and have little chance to make runs but... also I feel the dangers of bodyline were kind of played down in this book. Rightly or wrongly I couldn't say. Cricket is a complicated and fascinating game. I only wish I'd watched more of it when I was younger and had the time.
Anyway, if you're even slightly interested in cricket, this would be a good read for you.
It really doesn't seem fair (or, cricket as it is customary to say) to bowl very fast at a batsman's head and chest on the leg side, while overloading that side of the field so they fear for their safety and have little chance to make runs but... also I feel the dangers of bodyline were kind of played down in this book. Rightly or wrongly I couldn't say. Cricket is a complicated and fascinating game. I only wish I'd watched more of it when I was younger and had the time.
Anyway, if you're even slightly interested in cricket, this would be a good read for you.
April 12, 2012
I am usually quite sceptical of sports books and when I was bought this for a Christmas, many, many years ago, I was not overly impressed. I gave it a go when I first received and (I think) finished it, though I could remember none of it and didn't really enjoy it, as I was not the cricket enthusiast I am today. I picked Bodyline Autopsy up again last year and re-read it and was very much impressed. David Frith provides a solid account of the series itself, as well as the development of leg-theory and the aftermath. It can, at times, be slightly overwhelming, with the volume of names, particularly the administrators but eventually you can get to grips with who everyone is. It is written well, and is actually an enjoyable read, not just hugely interesting, and presents good portraits of the people involved. The scorecards, statistics, and photographs make the book more complete (though it would be a sin to not include stats for the ardent cricket lover). The series itself was (and still is) one of controversy but it still included some great cricket (bodyline aside)- Stan McCabe's SCG hundred, Eddie Paynter heroism at the Gabba, and the success of Gubby Allen despite his rejection of leg-theory, which stood out to me, for whatever reason, and I immensely respect him. This book is a must for the true cricket fan, it may seem heavy-going but it is definitely worth it- interesting, entertaining and enthralling. (I didn't say Larwood, Jardine or Bradman once! Oh wait...)
June 16, 2012
Bodyline - I was running a training session a year or so back & the Australians in the audience where (still) moaning about the iniquity of the bodyline tour!
July 8, 2025
In the sticky Kolkata summer of 2010, I was down with malaria—sapped, sleepless, and floating somewhere between fever dreams and cold reality. Amidst the dull rattle of ceiling fans and the occasional bitter gulp of quinine, I picked up Bodyline Autopsy by David Frith—a weighty, unapologetically dense volume gifted to me a year earlier by my cricket-fanatic friend, Shubhodeep Ghosh. And thank god I did, because this book didn’t just pass time—it gripped me by the collar and flung me into one of the most incendiary episodes in cricket history, an event that somehow managed to feel more feverish than the virus gnawing at my bones.
Bodyline Autopsy is no ordinary sports book. It’s a meticulous, dramatic, almost operatic retelling of the infamous 1932–33 Ashes series between England and Australia—a series that changed cricket forever, and arguably tarnished its soul. Frith’s scholarship is staggering. But what makes the book unforgettable is not just its sheer detail—the telegrams, letters, interviews, post-scripts—it’s the emotion that hums beneath every page. This is history told not with academic detachment, but with the breathless urgency of a courtroom drama and the gravitas of an imperial scandal.
At the centre of this storm is Douglas Jardine, the cold-blooded English captain who unleashed “leg-theory bowling”—later rechristened “Bodyline”—with lethal executioner Harold Larwood as his weapon of choice. Their mission was simple: stop Don Bradman, the Aussie run-machine who had been toying with bowlers like a child with a tin drum. The method? Short-pitched, body-directed missiles aimed at unsettling not just the batter, but the very rules of fair play.
Frith recreates the cricket, yes—but also the outrage. Australian newspapers screamed. Politicians wrote fiery letters. Relationships between cricket boards nearly collapsed. And through it all, there’s Bradman—elusive, brilliant, strangely aloof. Frith doesn’t romanticize him. Instead, he paints The Don as a human being caught in an ideological whirlwind: genius under siege.
Reading it while recovering from malaria was, in hindsight, eerily fitting. The helplessness I felt under the weight of fever and fatigue mirrored what the Australian players—and later, their fans—must’ve felt watching their cherished game weaponized against them. Bodyline wasn’t just about cricket. It was about power, imperial arrogance, psychological warfare. Frith shows how the English team, draped in the empire’s entitlement, played not just to win—but to subdue.
The book’s structure is sprawling, yet compelling. It begins with the build-up, escalates through match-by-match accounts, then tumbles into the fallout: strained diplomacy, bruised egos, shattered friendships. Frith even includes modern reflections—interviews with surviving players, commentary from cricketing philosophers, and his own simmering anger at how the game’s guardians allowed such a dark tactic to unfold unchecked. By the time I reached the final chapter, I felt like I had lived through not just a series, but a moral trial.
And that’s the genius of Bodyline Autopsy. It doesn't merely chronicle—it interrogates. What is acceptable in sport? Where do you draw the line between strategy and savagery? What happens when the ethics of play are sacrificed at the altar of national pride? Frith doesn’t pretend to have easy answers, but his book forces you to ask the hard questions—and in doing so, reminds you that cricket is not always the gentleman’s game we like to believe it is.
By the time my fever broke and my appetite returned, I had finished the book—though it had left me strangely uneasy. Not because it was difficult to read (it was brilliantly written), but because it shattered something sacred. Like many of us growing up in cricket-mad homes, I had always believed that the game stood apart from the ugliness of politics or brute force. Bodyline Autopsy made me see how naive that belief was.
Even now, 15 years after reading it, Jardine’s steely stare, Larwood’s murderous pace, and Bradman’s simmering silence return to me in flashes whenever I see a bouncer aimed at the helmet or hear commentators romanticize “mental disintegration.” And I think of that hot 2010 summer—the pills, the sweat, the mosquito nets—and the strange, unsettling comfort I found in a book that treated cricket like what it really is: a microcosm of everything human—noble, vicious, fragile, and forever in play.
Bodyline Autopsy is no ordinary sports book. It’s a meticulous, dramatic, almost operatic retelling of the infamous 1932–33 Ashes series between England and Australia—a series that changed cricket forever, and arguably tarnished its soul. Frith’s scholarship is staggering. But what makes the book unforgettable is not just its sheer detail—the telegrams, letters, interviews, post-scripts—it’s the emotion that hums beneath every page. This is history told not with academic detachment, but with the breathless urgency of a courtroom drama and the gravitas of an imperial scandal.
At the centre of this storm is Douglas Jardine, the cold-blooded English captain who unleashed “leg-theory bowling”—later rechristened “Bodyline”—with lethal executioner Harold Larwood as his weapon of choice. Their mission was simple: stop Don Bradman, the Aussie run-machine who had been toying with bowlers like a child with a tin drum. The method? Short-pitched, body-directed missiles aimed at unsettling not just the batter, but the very rules of fair play.
Frith recreates the cricket, yes—but also the outrage. Australian newspapers screamed. Politicians wrote fiery letters. Relationships between cricket boards nearly collapsed. And through it all, there’s Bradman—elusive, brilliant, strangely aloof. Frith doesn’t romanticize him. Instead, he paints The Don as a human being caught in an ideological whirlwind: genius under siege.
Reading it while recovering from malaria was, in hindsight, eerily fitting. The helplessness I felt under the weight of fever and fatigue mirrored what the Australian players—and later, their fans—must’ve felt watching their cherished game weaponized against them. Bodyline wasn’t just about cricket. It was about power, imperial arrogance, psychological warfare. Frith shows how the English team, draped in the empire’s entitlement, played not just to win—but to subdue.
The book’s structure is sprawling, yet compelling. It begins with the build-up, escalates through match-by-match accounts, then tumbles into the fallout: strained diplomacy, bruised egos, shattered friendships. Frith even includes modern reflections—interviews with surviving players, commentary from cricketing philosophers, and his own simmering anger at how the game’s guardians allowed such a dark tactic to unfold unchecked. By the time I reached the final chapter, I felt like I had lived through not just a series, but a moral trial.
And that’s the genius of Bodyline Autopsy. It doesn't merely chronicle—it interrogates. What is acceptable in sport? Where do you draw the line between strategy and savagery? What happens when the ethics of play are sacrificed at the altar of national pride? Frith doesn’t pretend to have easy answers, but his book forces you to ask the hard questions—and in doing so, reminds you that cricket is not always the gentleman’s game we like to believe it is.
By the time my fever broke and my appetite returned, I had finished the book—though it had left me strangely uneasy. Not because it was difficult to read (it was brilliantly written), but because it shattered something sacred. Like many of us growing up in cricket-mad homes, I had always believed that the game stood apart from the ugliness of politics or brute force. Bodyline Autopsy made me see how naive that belief was.
Even now, 15 years after reading it, Jardine’s steely stare, Larwood’s murderous pace, and Bradman’s simmering silence return to me in flashes whenever I see a bouncer aimed at the helmet or hear commentators romanticize “mental disintegration.” And I think of that hot 2010 summer—the pills, the sweat, the mosquito nets—and the strange, unsettling comfort I found in a book that treated cricket like what it really is: a microcosm of everything human—noble, vicious, fragile, and forever in play.
September 21, 2023
David Frith's 2002 book on the Bodyline series is a very good and thorough account, that provides an objective and well reasoned assessment of the merits and demerits of the English tactics. It gives us a wealth of facts and amusing litle asides about the players, the series and cricket in general at that time. Frith's prose style is slightly obscure on occasion, and he tends to eschew a strictly chronological approach to events which can be slightly confusing on occasion. There are slight irritants such as his insistence on giving us metric equivalents to every imperial distance mentioned. Also, since he writes so extensively about the aftermath of the series I could have wished for a more thorough dissection of the use of bodyline (or at any rate persistent bouncers) in the subsequent decades, especially those dished out by Thomson and Lillee in the 1970s and by the seemingly never-ending sequence of West Indian fast bowlers in the 70, 80s and 90s. Also the book lacks a proper bibliography which would have been useful.
All in all, a very good, if not quite definitive version of events.
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All in all, a very good, if not quite definitive version of events.
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February 7, 2024
A fascinating read. As a test cricket enthusiast (a barely see t20) I wish to see this series live. In this book there is no villain no heroes but all characters. Jardin is not a devil as typically portrayed. The more I read about Jardin the more I fall in love with his character - the typical no-nonsense English Aristocrat with scant regard for his subject but a lot of carrots and sticks for his subordinate. Bradman is not a saint but a human being with all his biases and dislikes. Voce and Larwoood, Richardson and Woodful are men of principle who stick by their choices. Just like present-day ICC, MCC also did not know what they were doing and like ICC they were with the powerful
May 10, 2019
Long and detailed i confess i got bogged down somewhat in the middle but nontheless surely the most comprehensive account of cricket's most notorious series that threatened diplomatic relations between the imperial nation and its dominion. Led by the haughty Jardine England set about trying to neuter Bradman to regain the Ashes using leg theory with fast bowler Douglas Jardine. England won by 4 1 and the Australians are still whining nearly 90 years later. The MCC left in a difficult position eventually agreed to its being outlawed.
July 19, 2022
The book every cricket fan should read…
A quite brilliant read. Written with such unreserved poignancy about an Ashes Series from a simpler and more appreciative time. David Frith tells you frankly without any bias of the lives of all the major participants, with Jardine, Larwood and Bradman the essentials, of the Bodyline Series. Unputdownable and utterly informative I was almost disappointed when I got to the end. An excellent page turner and a highly recommended read for anyone who likes a nostalgic true story about those who were dedicated to their cricketing craft.
A quite brilliant read. Written with such unreserved poignancy about an Ashes Series from a simpler and more appreciative time. David Frith tells you frankly without any bias of the lives of all the major participants, with Jardine, Larwood and Bradman the essentials, of the Bodyline Series. Unputdownable and utterly informative I was almost disappointed when I got to the end. An excellent page turner and a highly recommended read for anyone who likes a nostalgic true story about those who were dedicated to their cricketing craft.
March 2, 2023
Fantastic book. Incredibly well researched with great descriptions of the controversial test matches. Humour, drama, and a vivid portrait of the times that spawned this unique sporting event. Filled with characters, some likeable, some unlikeable and some very unlikeable, but most of them interesting. A must for cricket lovers.
November 6, 2025
The book went into too many details much earlier than the actual Test series talking about county and first class Cricketers in England and Australia who bowled a leg side line and used that theory. It was very boring! The “icing on the cake”, so to speak, in my decision not to continue reading was Firth’s biased rant against the great West Indies fast bowling attack of the mid-70s to early 90s. It showed his colonial bias and hypocrisy!
November 18, 2020
An astonishing work of Historical sporting non fiction. Gripping and read like a novel especially his accounts of the actual bodyline tests. I loved this book and was transported back there , Bravo Mr Frith
February 26, 2023
amazing book!
Very well written and balanced view on a very exciting time for cricket. Still love bouncers and body line! Highly recommend this for any fan of cricket and hits history.
Very well written and balanced view on a very exciting time for cricket. Still love bouncers and body line! Highly recommend this for any fan of cricket and hits history.
February 11, 2021
The ultimate in depth account of the most famous series of them all.
July 21, 2021
The most comprehensive account of the historic 1932-33 Ashes, written masterfully by David Frith.
August 22, 2023
Lovers of cricket 🏏 history
I really enjoyed this book and HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT to real cricket lovers and historians of our great game.Happy reading.
I really enjoyed this book and HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT to real cricket lovers and historians of our great game.Happy reading.
February 6, 2021
Excellent account of the 32/33 Ashes series and it’s repercussions. I found the most interesting parts of the book are those which explain the aftermath of the “bodyline” tour, especially the way in which Voce and Larwood were treated by the Establishment for the rest of their careers. Would the result of subsequent pre-war Ashes series have been different if leg theory bowling had continued and Jardine, Voce and Larwood had not been marginalised?
April 10, 2012
A well written and balanced account of the events leading to the "Bodyline" series. David Frith not only places the main characters in cricket's most controversial test series (or indeed match) ever, but he also provides a politocal, ecomionic and social background to the matches and what it meant for the respectiove countries, spectators, administrators and players. He is interesting in his views on players such as Bradman, Jardine and Larwood being both generous and critical.
A book that is both enjoyable and informative for cricket lovers, and those too who perhaps want to learn more of two countries playing their national game with the finest players in the world; Australia growing as a nation following its sacrifices on the Western Front and Gallipoli during the Great War, and of the Mother country grappling with the sacrifices and outcomes of that war at home and abroad.
A book that is both enjoyable and informative for cricket lovers, and those too who perhaps want to learn more of two countries playing their national game with the finest players in the world; Australia growing as a nation following its sacrifices on the Western Front and Gallipoli during the Great War, and of the Mother country grappling with the sacrifices and outcomes of that war at home and abroad.
December 16, 2015
I recently re-read this book, and it remains a well-written and thoroughly researched account of a contentious episode in cricket history. In addition to the absorbing passages on the pivotal Test matches, the author examines the diplomatic manoeuvres which went on during the tour, and the subsequent efforts to mend fences. The level of detail and erudition is impressive, and we also are given a window into the more informal and haphazard flavour of cricket tours, and top-level sport in general, which prevailed in those days.
November 14, 2014
To start with the end....one-liner will be...if you have not read this...read it to-day. How do you know about the era gone by...with those magical characters around, in and off the field...if you just not went through this book.Biggest event in all cricket history written in a majestic way by the author honored by hundreds covering all the social impact that shook and on verge of dividing the world straight two pieces.
July 18, 2014
The author obviously did a lot of research and unearthed copious facts, seemingly using every single one in this book. The overwhelming detail made reading it a real slog. Definitely one for the purists.
November 4, 2019
No author before or ever since has so clinically dissected the controversies, consequences and calamities surrounding the infamous 'Bodyline' cricket series. This is a must read for everybody who nourishes even the most infinitesimal interest in this beautiful game! A veritable masterpiece
February 8, 2020
A comprehensive and compelling account of the most sensational and controversial test series in the history of cricket. The impact of Bodyline continued well beyond this series. Also notable for the wonderful character analyses of many of the key participants, players and administrators alike.
May 16, 2024
Wonderful book detailing the notorious Bodyline tour of the England cricket team in Australia. It was a hugely enjoyable, & at times moving, read which told the story of the people involved, as well as the on-pitch events during the now infamous tour.
January 21, 2013
I thought this was an interesting book, it was certainly comprehensive, but I found it very hard work.
February 7, 2016
a very well researched book but I couldn't help feeling "does any of this REALLY matter anymore"
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews