After a mere 100 years the Spin, always first with 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 the former Surrey captain Percy Fender, which are being compiled into a fascinating new documentary film. It has always been a mystery that Fender, who was described by Wisden as “the shrewdest county captain of his generation” was never picked to lead England. After all these years, it now appears he was blackmailed out of the 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 who was very well known in the cricket world” who, during the course of a conversation over two half-bottles of champagne in Fender’s flat at the Adelphi, offered him the England captaincy for the 1924-25 Ashes tour. Fender was an amateur, and had a day job as wine merchant that meant he would need to arrange cover while he was away on the six-month tour. The “very well known” gentleman suggested he could do it for him.
“I rather jumped at that idea,” Fender says, “and going straight to the point I asked him how much he would want in the way of salary. After some thought he said: ‘Of course I can’t accept a salary and I can’t accept commission, but there’s nothing to prevent me a dividend on shares.’” Fender agreed, and suggested that they make out “a blank transfer for those shares so that I may take them back” as soon as the dividend was paid. The “well-known 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 per cent on so many shares in return for your work between September and April while I’m away you want to retain the shares for the future, for all time?’ He replied that he didn’t think I should look at it that way. I finished up by telling him quite bluntly that while I was perfectly prepared to pay him for any work he did for the business while I was away, I was not prepared to bribe him by giving him that share in my business for all time. After that he got up and said that he had to go. And so I knew that not only was I not going to captain England but that I probably wasn’t even going on the tour.”
Fender played two Tests in June 1924 but wasn’t picked again for England until 1929, when he returned for one last appearance.
Fender never revealed the identity of the blackmailer, but given his obvious influence it seems likely he was one of the selection committee MCC used to pick that Ashes squad, which included three contemporary county players Peter Perrin, John Daniell and Jack Sharp, as well as the MCC grandees Henry Leveson-Gower, Sir Pelham Warner, and Lord Harris, who repeatedly fell out with Fender because of their disagreements about the way the game ought to be run and played. Fender was a meritocrat, and repeatedly challenged the old rules enforcing the strict separation of amateurs and professionals in the game.
On the field, Fender batted with joyous abandon. He still holds the record for the fastest century in the history of first-class cricket, made in just 35 minutes. He once hit 52 off 14 consecutive balls, and he bowled anything and everything his team needed. He revelled in creative captaincy, and the film contains a remarkable story about a match against Essex in which nine members of the Surrey team arrived late for the day’s play, so Fender and one other played 20 minutes of championship cricket with just the two of them, taking turns to bowl and keep wicket. Off the field, he was a fighter pilot and an adventurer, who survived more than one near-death experience.
The decision to omit Fender from the 1924-25 Ashes team would end up having a profound effect on the history of the game. Since he wasn’t playing for England, Fender started covering them as a journalist. He ended up reporting on the 1928-29 Ashes tour, where he got his first look at a young Donald Bradman. Fender wouldn’t ever get to lead England against Bradman’s Australia, but his protege, Douglas Jardine, would. The story has always been that it was Fender who helped Jardine concoct the Bodyline tactics England used to beat Bradman’s Australia in 1932-33.
The archives shed new light on how Bodyline came about. In them, Fender says that he received two letters from Australian journalists he had befriended on tour in 1928, which both told him that the Australia’s senior batters had made a plan about how to deal with England’s fast bowlers, Harold Larwood, Bill Voce, Bill Bowes and Gubby Allen. They intended to stand in front of their stumps, and play all the short-pitched bowling to the leg-side. Fender even describes how Jardine asked him to show him the letters before the tour, so they could talk it over.
There was nothing new about short, fast bowling aimed at the body. “Leg theory” went 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, Fender says, was a direct response to Australia’s own tactics. A few days before the first Test, Jardine wrote to Fender from Australia. “I am already forced to have five men on the leg-side for the quickies,” he wrote, “and it rather looks as if, by the time the first Test starts, I shall have to have the whole lot on the leg-side.” 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 did anyone who said that he and Jardine had done anything wrong.
The documentary is being made with the support of Surrey County Cricket Club, and the team behind it is seeking a final round of investment to finish the project. You can contact andy.bull@theguardian.com if you are interested in learning more.