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https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/its-hypocrisy-we-west-indies-never-bowled-bouncers-for-hours-michael-holding-hits-out-how-the-laws-about-intimidatory-bowling-and-two-bouncers-per-over-came-about-8698252/

Ashes bouncers controversy: Why Michael Holding is angry at ‘hypocrisy’
and how race affects perception of West Indies’ bowling

‘We never bowled bouncers for hours’: As Michael Holding hits out, remembering how laws about intimidatory bowling and two bouncers per
over came about back in the day as a reaction to West Indies' bowling


“The hypocrisy of it stands out. At no stage in my West Indies career,
did we bowl bouncers for hours like this. At one stage on day 4, there
were 98% short-pitched deliveries.You think there is going to be any
real uproar about this tactic now? It’s England and Australia playing;
not the West Indies,” Michael Holding told The Indian Express.

There is a history here. When England’s Douglas Jardine devised the
Bodyline strategy to be deployed in the 1932-33 Ashes series in
Australia, specifically to stop Don Bradman indulge in another run-orgy,
the cricketing world began to prattle. The tactic was simple and
effective: bowl bouncers at the body with men packed behind the stumps
on the leg side, from leg gullies to men in the deep. At that point,
there was no restriction of fielders behind the stumps on the leg side
(now, only 2 fielders are allowed in that region).

Bradman’s average came down to 56.57, still pretty good of course but it
was nothing compared to 139.14 he had averaged in the previous Ashes in
1930. Bradman would start retreating to the leg side, and try thrashing
the ball to the off – a strategy attempted unsuccessfully by the likes
of Harry Brook in this game. Once, Bradman even chopped a ball onto his
stumps. There was a Jardine quote about how the idea kicked in when he
saw a film of Bradman bat on a spiteful pitch in 1930 – “I have got it … he’s yellow! (Read afraid). Bradman got an early inkling of what was to
come on the 1932 tour game in Perth and would tell his team-mates, ‘”You fellas have no idea what sort of summer this is going to be.” Though
there was an uproar in Australia with their captain Woodful saying,
“There are two teams out there; one is trying to play cricket and the
other is not” ( as an aside, the same quote was used by Anil Kumble
decades later during the Monkeygate series), no rules were changed.

Until, next summer when West Indies started to use the Bodyline attack
against England in England. It had the first instance of a batsman,
Patsy Hendren, cobbling a headgear and play with it. West Indies would
use the tactic again against India next summer. And finally, in 1935,
bodyline was introduced with an introduction of law which allowed the
umpires to step in if bowlers engaged in what was perceived as
intimidatory bowling. So, in some sense, the first rule change came
after the West Indies started to do it.

Decades later, after a fiery late 70’s and 80’s when West Indies prowled the world with their wondrously skill-full and hostile pace attack, yet
again the cricketing world was up in arms. This time the accusations
flood in about the number of bouncers they bowled and their slow over rates.

Mark Taylor, arguably Australia’s best Test captain in the last 40
years, would reference it in passing on Saturday. “You could battle
through an hour (against bouncer-barrage) and have just 15 runs. The
rules were then changed,” Taylor said in his commentary stint.

And that’s the type of comments Holding objected to when he said, “At no stage in my West Indies career, did we bowl bouncers for hours like this.”

In 1991, the rules were changed to allow only one bouncer per over. Then
in 1994 they allowed two bouncers, defined as above shoulder height.

“West Indies were always the target, you see,” Holding told The Indian Express. “With the over rate slowing up now, you won’t hear or read any negative writing about it.. Australia and England are playing; who is
going to write negatively? Over rate has been a joke for a very long
time. In our day we had six hours to bowl whatever overs… then
especially in the Caribbean we never even got six hours as we would
start at 11 am and light wouldn’t hold in the evening. They complained
about our over rates and yet they give these guys 6.5 hours and they
still don’t get in… no big talk about it … icc might fine but the boards pay it.”

In 2020, former West Indies captain Darren Sammy would be more direct
with his accusation at the cricketing world about bouncers and West Indies.

“Looking at the Fire in Babylon, looking at when (Jeff) Thomson and
(Dennis) Lillee and all these guys were bowling quick and hurting
people. Then I watch a black team becoming so dominant, and then you see
the bouncer rule start to come in and all these things start to come in
and I take it, as I understand it, as this is just trying to limit the
success a black team could have,” Sammy told Inside Out. “I might be
wrong but that’s how I see it. And the system should not allow that.”

In between the Bodyline (in the aftermath when intimidatory rules were
brought in) and 1994 when it became 2 bouncers, there was to be another
crucial change involving the number of fielders behind the stumps,
square on the leg side.

In 1957, after off spinners and medium pacers started to tail the ball
in on the legs, with a packed leg side field curtailing runs, it was
deemed too negative, and the rules were changed.

In an interview with this newspaper in 2018, Holding had talked about
how race affected the perception of his and West Indies’s bowling in
those times.

“Even our bowling. It was as if they thought, all we needed to do was
run up and bowl fast or short or whatever. That’s what irks me the most.
I tell them to go check the scorebook: how many were lbw, bowled, caught
in slips or whatever. It’s as if they don’t want to credit our thinking.
I have never seen more intelligent and crafty bowlers like Andy or
Malcolm.” Even his beautiful run-up was subconsciously attributed to his
race by many. “As far as my run-up goes, I would put it down to my
long-jump training in younger days. You had to be smooth, you had to
sprint and you could not cross that white line. That’s why I hardly ever bowled a no ball in my life.”

Let’s end with a story that Holding shared on Saturday evening. “I was
once commentating with Nasser Hussain and they showed a statistics of
our bowling and Nasser went, ‘Mikey, so many bowled, lbws and length
bowling, then why were your team targeted as if you bowled just bouncers
the whole day?’ I joked with a bit of sarcasm, “Well, Nasser you see,
the stumps were taller in our times!”

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