Harold Larwood
Location unknown circa 1928
PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN
Born in Nuncargate, a mining village in Nottinghamshire, Harold Larwood worked down the pits from 14, taking his place among the prematurely ravaged lifers of the mine. At weekends, in kit purchased by his father, who’d pulled double shifts to raise the money to buy it, he would bowl. At 18, Notts offered him a way out, a professional contract to play under the flamboyant captaincy of Arthur Carr. A quiet boy, churchgoing, teetotal, Larwood would escape into a wholly different world. It was 1923. Ten years later he would be cast as the bogeyman in an infamous Ashes series, carrying the can for the fallout; “a ‘disgraced’ hero,” in Wisden’s notably air-quoted assessment, “banished to obscurity”.
Pound for pound, Larwood was…
