'THIS IS HEADLINE, NOT BODYLINE.'

England selector Len Hutton describes the brutal tactics of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson in the 1974/5 Ashes series fifty years ago.

I come from a land Down Under Where women glow and men plunder Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder?? You better run, you better take cover.

This Men at Work anthem was actually released in 1981, but some of the lyrics would be very relevant to the England team who toured Australia seven years earlier in 1974/5. They certainly didn’t hear the thunder before the series began, and quickly discovered there was nowhere to hide. Today, December 4th, is the 50th anniversary of the day England succumbed meekly to a rampaging Jeff Thomson in the first Test in Brisbane. “It doesn’t worry me in the least to see the batsman hurt rolling around screaming and blood on the pitch,” Thommo had said before the series.

It was just the start of one of the most brutal Test series there has ever been. It changed the game for ever. To mark this event, we have launched a special four-part PODCAST SERIES relaying the dramatic events of Australia’s 4-1 Pommy-bashing, and hearing from some of the protagonists involved, some of whom were scarred for life. Apologies if it is not very Christmas spirited, but you can’t change history. Unless you’re Donald Trump.

It was the first overseas series for which TV highlights were available in England, and in the midst of a winter of political and economic unrest, viewers in the UK were looking forward to some rays of sunshine transmitted from the other side of the world. Sadly they would soon have been watching it from behind the sofa. Even the grainy pictures on YouTube illuminate the brutality of the experience for England’s batters, none protected by anything other than a cloth cap and a flimsy thigh pad.

“You’d have been better off with a copy of Readers Digest down your trousers,” opined David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd. He has at least dined out for years on the moment when he was hit in the box by a lifting delivery from Thomson. “It was a pink Litesome [box] and it had holes in it. Completely useless for the job it was supposed to do. Everything that should have been inside it had found its way through these holes and was trapped now on the outside.” Makes the eyes water thinking about it.

Fate worse than death - David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd is ‘boxed’ by Jeff Thomson.

England’s dressing room at the Gabba resembled a casualty ward after the bruising first Test - played on a pitch prepared by the local mayor - and England were forced to send out an SOS for replacements. In contrast to Ben Stokes’s England side piloting in a 21 year old (Jacob Bethell) with only 20 first class games under his belt to bat at number three, Mike Denness’s England called up a 41 year old, Colin Cowdrey, who had played almost 700 first class games. How times change.

Though both seem to have relished the opportunity. Bethell looked composed on his awkward first outing in New Zealand and compiled a scintillating second-innings fifty in England’s eight wicket win. Cowdrey, ducking, weaving and occasionally wearing the Lillee and Thomson missiles on the world’s fastest pitch in Perth, met Lloyd in the middle after one hostile over. “This is rather fun, isn't it?” Cowdrey said. “I looked at him,” Lloyd remembers. “I said, ‘I've been in funnier situations than this! What does he mean it’s fun? It’s a bloody ordeal!”

Looking more like a Hell’s Angel with his piratical hirsuteness, Lillee, who’d worked very hard to recover from a serious back injury, was menacing enough off his long, marauding run and giant leap at the crease. But Thomson was genuinely frightening. Gliding a short distance to the wicket, he did an odd chassé with his feet before his body jack-knifed backwards at the crease. Momentarily his right hand practically touched the ground behind him and his front foot pointed at the batsman’s head. Then in a whiplash of arm the ball was catapulted up the other end. It was like the sudden release of a sapling bent double. They were a magnificent and fearsome double act.

How fast were they? I once did some primitive calculations using the frames in the TV footage, and came up with Lillee at around 86mph and Thommo closer to 90mph, though his speed was variable. It was his nonchalant approach, unconventional action and the speed at which he got the ball to leap at the batter’s throat from not very short of a length that made him so lethal. England’s Dennis Amiss was a regular victim of what he called Thommo’s trapdoor ball, because it literally ‘appeared from nowhere.’

They terrorized England to the tune of 57 wickets between them in the series which in some quarters was seen as Australia’s revenge for Bodyline, almost half a century before. It unearthed new ruthless tactics on 1970s batsmen, which Australia then used with equal success on the West Indies some months later. They probably regretted it. West Indies subsequently unleashed a battery of frightening fast bowlers on the world game, leading to more than a decade of total domination. At least by then, helmets were in regular use. In the 1974/5 Ashes, the only protection the England batters had was a bit of foam padding sewn into their shirts by their concerned wives, and the England badge on their cap. It was a miracle no-one was maimed. Anyway hope you enjoy our recounting of perhaps one of the scariest sporting events ever seen on TV.

Please subscribe to our premium site and listen to the first episode HERE.

David Tossell’s excellent book on the 1974/5 Ashes Blood on the Tracks is out now.