County Championship 9th (P28, W8, D13, L7)
Captain Arthur Carr; Ben Lilley
The rows and ramifications that started in Melbourne and Sydney in the winter of 1932 were still being felt in 1934, and tended to overshadow the cricket, particularly for Nottinghamshire and their fast bowling partnership of Larwood and Voce.
With Australia touring England and both a Test Match and a county game against them at Trent Bridge, the scene was set for further controversy.
The Test, the first of the summer, took place in June and the debate ahead of the game was whether Larwood, or Voce (or both) would be selected. Larwood himself put an end to that debate by announcing that if picked he would continue to bowl ‘leg theory’. In the event, neither Notts bowler was chosen for their home test and England paid the price – losing by 238 runs, due mainly to a then career-best bowling return of 7-54 by Bill ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly.
Larwood, coming back after an operation on the left foot he had injured on the 1932-33 Ashes Tour, was not always at full pace during the season and had to be handled carefully to get the best of out him. Whether it was this, or for more diplomatic reasons, he was not picked by Notts for the game against the tourists in August.
Bill Voce did play and with his left-arm action making leg theory a natural line of attack, demolished the Aussies’ first innings with a season’s best 8-66 – many taken in the leg side cordon.
Australia made 237 and Notts, led by wicket keeper Ben Lilley, mustered just 183 in reply. When the visitors batted again, just three overs were possible before rain ended the day prematurely. Bill Voce bowled two of those overs – again using a predominantly leg side field.
Next morning when Notts too the field, the big left-armer was not among them. The crowd were naturally curious – not to say sceptical – and eventually an announcement was made that owing to a ‘recurrence of shin trouble’, Voce would take no further part in the match.
Dr George Ogg Gauld, Hon Secretary of the Club as well as a doctor, later explained that he had examined Voce and advised him not to play.
This did not, however, pacify the irate Notts members nor bring the debate to a close – there were still many prominent voices claiming that the Notts Committee had bowed to pressure from the Australians and from the MCC to take Voce out of the attack.
Arthur Carr, who had suffered a heart attack earlier in the season, was among the leaders of the opposition to the Committee and said that had he been captain, Voce would have played and bowled in the second innings.
Eventually, things got to such a pitch that there were calls, led by Carr and others, for the whole Nottinghamshire Committee to resign en bloc.
The bad feeling between the Club and members was not helped by the announcement in December thar Carr would be replaced as skipper in the 1935 season by a joint captaincy of George Heane and Stuart Rhodes – the first, and still the only, instance of joints captains at Trent Bridge.
There was more to come, of course, but the full outcome would not be played out until 1935.
And even that was not the only bone of contention when the Aussies came to Trent Bridge. The Test Match produced a mini drama worthy of a classic Ealing comedy.
The film rights for the Test had been sold to Gaumont British for £250 and the still photographic rights to Central Press. To protect the broadcasters, spectators were searched, not for drink (40,000 glass bottles were cleared off the ground after one day’s play), but for cameras and these were locked away until play ended.
A rival film company built a great scaffold on the corner of Bridgford Road and Musters Road with cameramen perched on the top.
Gaumont British erected screens on top of the boundary wall to block the view, then as the scaffold rose higher, balloons were flown above the screens.
The banned film company hired a car which drove close to the Bridgford Road boundary. A man clambered on top of the car and cut the guy ropes, releasing the balloons which were then seen floating off towards Market Square!
Meanwhile, of course, there was a County Championship campaign to be conducted. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Notts had an indifferent season – ninth place being a fair reflection of the form, and mindset, of players not used to performing under such circumstances.
Four times they lost by an innings but twice won as easily – oddly, both were victories by an innings and 53 runs.
They won matches against Warwickshire at home, despite conceding a first innings lead, Harold Butler taking 6-39 as Notts won by 24 runs and beat them again at Edgbaston, winning by 10 wickets. Voce was the bowling heron on this occasion, taking eleven wickets in the match.
The closest game of the season was an eight-run win over Hampshire in which bowlers again prevailed. Len Creese and Stuart Boyes shared the twenty Notts wickets to fall and George Vernon Gunn had the only ‘ten-fer’ match of his career, taking five in each innings (Bill Voce got seven).
The two matches won by the same margin were away to Leicestershire at Aylestone Road where Larwood and Voce did most of the damage, and at home to Gloucestershire. The visitors used ten bowlers (only keeper Dallas Page did not get a bowl) as Notts racked up 478-5 declared, Walter Keeton 261.
Essex were beaten by 145 at Westcliff-on-Sea; Kent by 20 runs at Trent Bridge; and Middlesex by eight wickets, also at home.
Despite the travails of the season, there were some excellent performances. Three batters – Keeton, Hardstaff and Harris – made more than 1800 runs (Arthur Staples also passed the 1,000 mark) and among the bowlers, Bill Voce led the way with 128 First-Class wickets, followed by Larwood – who missed several matches – on 82 at the parsimonious average of 17.25.
The furore over leg theory bowling was not confined to the Australia game - during theChampionship programme, three rival counties complained that Notts had breached a 'gentlemens agreement' not use 'direct attack' bowling and, remarkably (to the bafflement of members) the Notts Committee supported two of those complaints. Indeed, Lancashire were so outraged by what they saw as unfair tactics that they resolved not play Nottinghamshire in1935!
Two players made their First-Class debuts in 1934. Pat Vaulkhard, from a strong cricketing family, played most of his career at Derbyshire but had this one season with Notts, playing in nine matches. Frank Woodhead played for Notts until 1950 and served later as county coach – the indoor school at Trent Bridge, ‘Woodhead Hall’ is named for him – and was the founder of the Notts Old Players Association.
Scorecards and stats can be seen here
January 2025