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Johnny Wardle Home Movies - England in Australia 1958/59; Centenary Test, 1977
Sabrina bowls! The 50s bombshell takes centre stage - and the attention away from some wonderful cricket footage.
Overview
Johnny Wardle's home-movie footage of the controversial 1958/9 tour of Australia contains some excellent cricket footage, including slow motion shots of bowling actions, which were under close scrutiny at the time. But it's the sequence in which glamour model and actress Sabrina turns her arm over which catches the cameraman's eye - for all the wrong reasons.
20 years later, Wardle was back down under to cover the Centenary Test, including Derek Randall's magnificent 174 in the second innings which almost turned the tide, but eventually only delayed a captivating Australian victory. Wardle's amateur films, preserved in the BFI National Archive, are invaluable records of cricket tours and their social context in the 1950s. Wardle himself was an England regular until 1958 and a member of the press corps thereafter.
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