Just heard this about Douglas Jardine on Fighting Talk, excellent stuff, what a hero....
"Douglas Jardine, though, earned the enmity of a nation more resoundingly than any England captain before or since - including Mike Gatting, whose 1987 spat with Shakhoor Rana did nothing to endear him to many Pakistanis, and Ian Botham, who three years earlier had caused mighty offence (although not while he was captain) by suggesting that Pakistan was a good place to send one's mother-in-law.
Jardine topped that not merely by masterminding the fiendish Bodyline bowling tactics - designed to diminish the threat of Don Bradman, and devastatingly carried out by Harold Larwood and Bill Voce - but also by applying what appears to have been a premeditated exercise to get Australian backs up.
From the beginning of the tour he affected disdain for all things Australian: its accent, its women, its wine, even the inability of its cricketers to express themselves with quite the precise syntax drummed into him at Winchester.
He was, according to my (old Etonian) colleague Henry Blofeld, "a rather typical Wykehamist... they seem to have a certain sort of remoteness".
Whatever, Jardine plainly embodied everything Aussies despised about the Old Country, and insisted on wearing a Harlequins cap, a powerful and provocative symbol of English privilege, while batting.
My favourite Jardine story [by Brian Viner from the Independent] concerns his astonishment, feigned or otherwise, on the eve of the first Test in Sydney, when Australian cricket writers assembled at the nets to request the names of England's team.
"Let me make it clear once and for all," he said.
"I do not speak to the Press, and furthermore, I never speak to Australians."
"
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