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Harold Larwood (14 November 1904 – 22 July 1995) was an English cricket player, an extremely accurate fast bowler best known for his key role as the implementer of fast leg theory in the infamous "Bodyline" Ashes Test series of 1932–33.

In 2009 Larwood was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.

Larwood was born in Nuncargate, Nottinghamshire to working-class parents. As a child, a near-fatal accident prompted his father to make him a primitive bat, and the child reportedly took to cricket with great enthusiasm. Leaving school at fourteen to become a labourer in the local mine, he also began to play for the village cricket team.

By eighteen Larwood was invited to trial for Nottinghamshire, where he was offered a professional contract and starred with bat and ball.

Larwood was by this stage a fearsome bowler, claimed by many observers to bowl at speeds well in excess of "90 miles per hour" (145 km/h). Frank Tyson recalls that attempts to measure his speed were highly variable "Larwood, for instance, was measured by high speed photography at between 90 and 130mph!" Such speeds would match him with the fastest of modern fast bowlers, Shoaib Akhtar and Brett Lee. Larwood, moreover, was also very accurate. Such a combination made Larwood the most dangerous fast bowler of his time.

In 1926, he played his first Test match against Australia in the second Test of the series, at Lord's. Taking 2/99 and 1/37, he did not secure a permanent place in the team until the 1928 series, where he took seventeen wickets, including 6/32 in the first innings of the first Test.

The arrival of Donald Bradman in the Australian team saw the English cricketing hierarchy scratching their heads to devise a plan to defeat the Australian phenomenon and thus retain the Ashes trophy. Douglas Jardine, the English captain (and, like all England captains of the prewar era, a "gentleman amateur" leading a team partly made up of working-class professionals), determined that Bradman was vulnerable to short-pitched bowling, and adopted "fast leg theory". Larwood was tasked with implementing the plan, and thus the stage was set for the Bodyline Test series.

By the end of the series in 1932-33, the MCC Lords celebrated the return of the Ashes back to England, not realising the damage that Larwood's Bodyline bowling had caused on the fast pitches of Australia. However, in 1933, Bodyline was used during the West Indies tour of England. There the MCC Lords saw for the first time that the "Fast Leg Theory" involved in Bodyline bowling was not the same as the tactic known by that innocuous name in English County Cricket. Rather, it was an extremely lethal and intimidating premeditated plan of attack. Concerned about the souring diplomatic relations between England and Australia as a result of this, the MCC hypocritically reprimanded Larwood and asked him to sign a Letter of Apology to the Australian Cricket Board & Players. Larwood refused on the basis that he, as a professional cricketer, was obliged to follow the directions of his captain, whose responsibility the tactics were. Larwood never played cricket for England again, returning to Nottinghamshire where he played until 1938. Although Jardine was never asked to apologise, and Larwood felt he was being made the scapegoat, Larwood was never to play again for England or the M.C.C. but continued to play for Nottinghamshire until cricket was suspended in 1939.

Harold Larwood married Lois Bird, and had five children.

When he retired from cricket he ran a sweetshop in Blackpool. However, Jack Fingleton persuaded him to emigrate to Australia in 1950 where he worked for the Coca-Cola Company. Although newsreel announced the arrival of the Demon Bowler in Australia, he lived a quiet life in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney Australia. He was awarded an MBE in 1993. His most treasured possession was a small silver ashtray inscribed "To Harold, For The Ashes, From A Grateful Skipper" from Douglas Jardine. Larwood met the England fast bowler Frank Tyson on Christmas Eve 1954, but refused to come to the England dressing room because of the MCC's treatment of him in the 1930s, but he did say "When you hear 50,000 Aussies shouting at you, you know you've got 'em worried".Larwood's ashes, along with his wife's, are interred at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Kingsford, New South Wales, Australia.

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