Lord’s, July 21, 2005: with the second ball of the eagerly awaited Ashes series, Stephen Harmison bowls just short of a length and hits Justin Langer, of Australia, on the elbow. In his fourth over, Harmison hits Matthew Hayden on the helmet and then, with the first hour of the series not yet over, Harmison bounces the ball into the grille of Ricky Ponting’s helmet, drawing blood on the cheek of the Australia captain. Who said aggressive bowling ended with bodyline?

Fast, short-pitched bowling has been part of cricket since Alfred Mynn asked where the fun was in bowling underarm in the early 19th century. So has negative bowling on leg stump. Where Douglas Jardine differed was to marry the two, using the fastest bowler in the world and a string of excellent close fielders on the leg side.

But that does not mean that intimidation ended when the laws were changed to ban bodyline. From Keith Miller to Harmison, stopping off along the way at Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson (captained by the grandson of Australia’s vice-captain in the Bodyline series), Bob Willis and Merv Hughes, the Ashes series have been full of aggressive, dangerous bowlers.

Yet for sheer intimidation, can anything top the West Indies teams of the 1970s and 1980s? Working in a pack of four (pick from Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Andy Roberts, Wayne Daniel, Joel Garner, Colin Croft and others), they targeted the man as often as the stumps, memorably roughing up Brian Close in 1976 and breaking Mike Gatting’s nose ten years later.

Even Clive Lloyd’s bowlers did not inflict as hideous an injury as Charlie Griffith, the West Indies bowler who fractured the skull of Nari Contractor in 1962. The batsman lay unconscious for six days. By coincidence, he was replaced as India captain by the Nawab of Pataudi Jr, son of the “conscientious objector” who had defied Jardine 30 years earlier.

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