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In 1939 he was back in the press box again, this time as correspondent to the Daily Telegraph. He covered nearly a full season of Championship matches and the first two Tests against the West Indies, and in this period he produced far and away his best cricket writing. The slightly long-winded style had tightened up considerably. He was as generous to the players as ever and even found a kind word or two for the selectors. He seemed to have acquired the greatest of all cricket writers’ skills: knowing when to write about something else if the cricket is boring. His reports (lengthy by modern standards) often contained leisurely and entertaining musings on players and matches past and present but he was not given to making unfavourable comparisons with the glories of the past, and he was so modest about his own place in the game’s history that when he referred to incidents on, say, the 1928–29 or 1932–33 tours he did so as if he hadn’t been there at all.

By the beginning of August 1939 the amount of space devoted to cricket in the Daily Telegraph reflected the national preoccupation with the impending hostilities. Jardine ended his description of the Surrey v. Yorkshire match with the words, ‘This is the last county match I shall see for some time as I am off to camp with the Territorials.’

Shortly afterwards, he was commissioned into the Royal Berkshire Regiment and went with the British Expeditionary Force to France where he served with distinction. In 1982, this story appeared in The Observer: ‘He was sent by headquarters in Dunkirk into Belgium to discover why troops there had not made contact. Jardine found them all dead, commandeered a troop carrier and drove himself back through enemy lines.’ I have not been able to verify this story but such an act of cold courage would have been quite in keeping with Jardine’s character. He was fortunate enough to get back from Dunkirk but, like so many who had been through it, his feet were badly cut about. He volunteered to go back and help to hold Calais but his commanding officer turned him down. They were taking on single men only and not only was Jardine married but his wife had just given birth to their third child.

Over the next few months he was stationed at St Albans as a staff captain and the family rented a house nearby in Harpenden. The British Expeditionary Force was in the process of reorganisation and Jardine’s responsibility was arranging transport for troops joining newly formed regiments. Being rather older than his fellow-captains and majors, he made no intimate friendships, but one fellow-officer remembers that he was in no way aloof. In fact, everyone was surprised by his diffidence and shy politeness, which was not at all what they had expected of the terror of Adelaide. He was frequently pressed to discuss the bodyline tour but he refused to be drawn, although he did once remark that, knowing the War Office, his next posting would be as Liaison Officer with the Australian Army.

As it happened, he spent the rest of the war in India – first of all in Quetta and then in Simla, where he was a major in the Central Provisions Directorate. He had a great liking for Simla and its incongruous English architecture, and he loved the historic landscape of the North-West Frontier, which he planned to explore extensively after the war. He became fluent in Hindustani (his daughter remembers that he often used to break into it at home), and he involved himself, albeit rather formally, in the social life of the base. An officer stationed there at the time wrote, ‘In the evenings he always wore blue patrols, as ram-rod stiff as a Spy cartoon.’ He was perfectly friendly though never intimate. He used to enjoy a game of snooker in the club but would discreetly withdraw when people started to bet on his skill (which was considerable).

He gave a series of lectures to the troops, mainly on cricket and fishing. He even managed to play a few games of cricket, but had little opportunity to show what he could do since the local umpires were as keen to take his wicket as were the bowlers. There was one first-class match however. It was in early 1944 at Bombay and its purpose was to raise money for war charities. Jardine captained a Services XI against an Indian XI led by Mushtaq Ali. Hardstaff and Jardine shared an attractive stand and both players made runs, but the Indian XI won an exciting match with 12 minutes to spare.

It may seem strange that a man with such exceptional gifts of courage and leadership should have been allowed to while away the latter half of the war doling out provisions. It has been stated that he was kept out of things because of bodyline, but this is quite untrue. The explanation, and one is certainly needed, is not so convenient. He had never been a great respecter of authority, or maybe it would be more accurate to say that he was unwilling to submit to the sort of authority for which he had no respect. In the army, his concern for the problems and welfare of those under his command lessened his effectiveness as a leader in the eyes of his superiors. Humanity, the very quality he has been said to have lacked, prevented him from being given more crucial work.

Like many in 1945, he found himself newly demobbed and without prospects. He had hoped to come back to a job in coal mining which had been promised to him, but he found that the job had disappeared and he had to look around for something else. Meanwhile Margaret Jardine had moved the family into an old manor house at Drayton, in Somerset. The move was not altogether successful, Jardine’s temperament was not suited to rural tranquility and this, combined with his urgent need to find a job, resulted in another move to Radlett in Hertfordshire. He was then appointed Company Secretary to a firm of paper manufacturers in London, Wiggins Teape.

In 1946 he took part in a perfectly stage-managed centenary match at the Oval. It was not first-class but it was attended with ceremony worthy of a Test match. The sides were Surrey and Old England and the match was played in aid of Surrey’s centenary appeal. There was a festival atmosphere with a band playing, the King present and the sun shining. 15,000 people saw Percy Fender lead out his Old England side which included Jardine, Sutcliffe, Hendren, Sandham, Woolley, Tate and Freeman. Surrey batted first and made 248 for 6 declared. Old England very nearly got the runs thanks to substantial innings from Woolley, Hendren and Jardine. Jardine and Hendren put on 108 with Jardine’s contribution being 54. ‘D. R. Jardine,’ said Wisden, ‘wearing his Oxford Harlequin cap, was as polished as ever in academic skill.’

When he was fielding he cut a lonely figure, according to one person who saw the match. He was positioned on the boundary and chased the ball with stiff-kneed studiousness, not joining in the conversations at the fall of each wicket or in between overs. It was his first major appearance since the outlawing of bodyline, and perhaps he was as nervous about talking to his team-mates as he was about the reception the crowd would give him. Both were cordial enough, it seems, without being overwhelming.

By 1948, a slight change of opinion had taken place. He was not exonerated exactly, but the need for a scapegoat was not so pressing as before the war. The new attitude was reflected in Wisden’s obituary of M. R. Jardine, who died in the early part of 1947:

His son, D. R. Jardine, captained England during the Australian tour of 1932–33 when the Ashes were recovered in the series of five matches made notable by the ‘bodyline’ description of specially fast bowling, introduced in a manner since copied by Australian teams without objection by England or adverse criticism.

Lindwall and Miller had humbled the 1946–47 English team with the aid of a liberal sprinkling of short-pitched deliveries. It was not bodyline but, because the bumper had been used so very sparingly since 1935, its sudden re-introduction caused a certain amount of consternation. And when Lindwall and Miller persisted with their methods in the 1948 series, there were those who feared that things might be getting out of hand again. The real cause of the trouble was the usual one: one side had fast bowlers and the other did not. The English feeling was that the score had at last been settled. The crime of bodyline had, to a large extent, been expiated and Jardine was no longer quite the guilty reminder to the nation’s cricketing conscience.

At the end of the 1948 season, he was persuaded to captain an England XI against Glamorgan, the Champion County, at Cardiff. His reception from the crowd was warm and enthusiastic. He made no specially notable contribution to the match and even declined to go for a win in the final session when it seemed to be there for the taking. His undeniably slow batting passed almost without a murmur; those present had the defeat of England in the Tests fresh in their minds and Jardine’s presence was a reminder that when he was in his prime the Australians were far from invincible.

As had been the case after the First World War, there seemed little hope of winning the Ashes for quite a few years. An excellent publication called The Daily Worker Cricket Handbook 1949, which one would have expected to have been the least nationalistically minded, was quite distraught at England’s inability to knock the stuffing out of the Aussies, and bemoaned the absence of men such as Jardine who had the mettle to put things right. (Just to please the hard-line readership, though, there was an attack on MCC snobbism.) He was missed a great deal more than was generally admitted. Indeed, this is still the case. While researching this book I received letters and listened to testimonies which, while deprecating the use of bodyline, would frequently finish with the statement, or variations on it: ‘But we could do with a few more like Douglas now.’ And in September 1980 at Lord’s I overheard a senior MCC member saying to his pal, ‘Of course, the last real captain we had was Jardine!’

In 1953 he was elected to be the first president of the Umpires Association. This was a job he thoroughly enjoyed. He had always been especially interested in umpiring and had the highest respect for those who undertook it. From 1955 to 1957 he was president of Oxford University Cricket Club, which might be considered a somewhat belated honour since he was never elected to captain the University; he and Lord Harris are the only two Oxonians to have captained England but not Oxford against Cambridge.

He took up journalism again in 1953 for the Star but, whether because of editorial constraints or for other reasons, his writing fell some way short of the standard he had set for himself in 1939 on the Daily Telegraph. 1953 was the year in which England won back the Ashes for the first time since Jardine’s side had done it in 1933. Jardine had the highest opinion of Hutton’s captaincy and wrote that it was ‘a joy to report’ his success in that role. Jardine held different views from Lord Hawke on the subject of professional captains. He had always firmly expressed the view that many more professionals could with advantage be appointed as captains and elected to serve on selection committees. Verity, he believed, would have made a particularly good captain, as would Sutcliffe, who proved his ability when leading the Players on four occasions. In fact, if Sutcliffe had accepted the Yorkshire captaincy when it was supposedly offered to him in 1927, he might well have been given the England captaincy ahead of Jardine when the time came.

Jardine was moderately successful as a cricket commentator on the radio. His observations were always perceptive and lucidly expressed, but his delivery was a little slow for post-war tastes. It certainly lacked the bite of the modern ‘I don’t know what’s going on out there’ school. He undertook these broadcasting and journalistic engagements more out of a need to earn a living than as a means of maintaining contact with the first-class game. By now he had a wife and four children to support. Things weren’t quite as hard as earlier in their marriage when Margaret Jardine had taken to smallholding, but the extra income was useful and Jardine himself contributed short stories to the evening newspapers which brought in a bit more. He tended to worry a good deal about money but defied the constraints of austerity to the extent of running a somewhat decrepit Rolls Royce Phantom II, bought from a chap in Bognor Regis where the family were holidaying.

The family was a very close one and Jardine involved himself more in the children’s upbringing than most men of his class were accustomed to do at the time. He read to them, played with them, took them on outings (the circus being a particular favourite), and his daughter also remembers the family sitting round listening to ‘The Goon Show’, which used to make him cry with laughter. All the children were sent to boarding schools but during the holidays there would be large gatherings of Peats and Jardines either at Hockwold Hall or on the estates that Sir Harry Peat rented in Perthshire. The Peats were a great sporting family; there was a substantial amount of shooting attached to Hockwold Hall and about 25,000 acres went with Crosscraigs House on the south side of Loch Rannoch. The children were all taught to fish, stalk and walk with guns as a matter of course.

To Jardine’s great delight, his two eldest daughters, Fianach and Marion, became fond of playing and watching cricket and often went with him to Lord’s for the day. His only son, Euan, though, was unable to continue the distinguished cricketing line. Margaret Jardine had come into contact with German measles while carrying him, he was born with a weak heart and suffered from very bad health throughout his childhood. His father was fully aware of the pressure that resulted from having a famous father and a number of contemporaries remember that he was deeply concerned about it.

Jardine was a devoted family man but he was also fond of socialising. They did not entertain much at Radlett and so he tended to do a fair bit of clubbing, lunching and bridge-playing in London. Ian Peebles recalled in Spinner’s Yarn that ‘D.R.J. came to the City at intervals and we saw quite a lot of him. He was a splendid guest with the agreeable habit of particularly addressing his remarks to anyone who seemed shy or left out of the conversation.’

He was chairman of the New South Wales Land Agency, which was a sheep-farming concern. When the company was taken over by the Scottish Australian Company, he was taken onto the board of directors and in 1953 he was asked to travel to Australia on the company’s behalf to assess the development possibilities of the property. He hesitated for obvious reasons before undertaking the mission, and he went to the trouble of consulting Jack Fingleton, by now a friend and press box colleague, on the sort of reception he was likely to get. Fingleton tried to explain that Australians do not as a rule bear grudges and that he would be warmly welcomed. With some trepidation Jardine went ahead with the trip and found that Fingleton had been right. There was no pelting with rotten eggs at the airport and he was jovially received, in his own words, ‘as an old so-and-so who got away with it’.

A reunion lunch was arranged with Prime Minister Menzies attending, also Larwood, Mailey, Bardsley and Oldfield. Larwood’s autobiography includes an account of the occasion, which seems to have been most convivial, with people making jokes about bodyline without any embarrassment. Fingleton remembered that he also gave a talk in the radio series, ‘Guest of Honour’, which was very well received. Jardine was pleased but puzzled – he could not understand these Australians at all.

Larwood himself had been even more warmly welcomed when, three years earlier, he had emigrated to Australia. Again this had been at Fingleton’s instigation. The ex-Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, had personally paid half the Larwood family’s hotel bill when they first arrived.

In 1957 Jardine was obliged to make a similar trip, this time to inspect land which he owned in Rhodesia. It was a working holiday and he took with him his second eldest daughter, Marion, for whom the trip was a twenty-first birthday present. While he was there he contracted a disease called tick fever. He did not respond to treatment as well as was expected, but the doctors felt there was no cause for great concern and recommended a long sea voyage back to England.

On his return, he was admitted to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, where his condition showed no improvement. He was moved to University College Hospital and tests revealed an advanced state of cancer. Deep-ray treatment was administered, but without success. His wife was then told by one of the hospital doctors about a clinic in Switzerland which was having a moderate degree of success against cancer. Jardine agreed to go, although neither he nor his children knew what was wrong with him. The deep-ray treatment had caused him great difficulty with his breathing and he thought that the Swiss mountain air would help.

The couple travelled to Switzerland and he was admitted to the clinic. It was found that he not only had lung cancer but that it had got to the stomach and the brain as well. There was nothing they could do for him beyond giving him pain-killing drugs and on 18 June 1958 he died. His body was cremated and flown home and his ashes were scattered over the top of Cross Craigs mountain in Perthshire.

From Jardine, A Spartan Cricketer, 1984