This bit is 100% true though, wish more casual fans understood it.
Probably the only argument against this would be long sleeves?
Problem with this idea that it's just unconscious, shouldn't be thought of in such a moral way, etc., is that there is a parallel that—because he was around at the time—makes Peebles look ignorant as well:
Dragging.
If you watch footage from the 40s and 50s, a lot of bowlers frequently dragged their back foot perhaps half a metre or more before their front foot even landed. Three of the four fast bowlers
in this 1956 match do it.
Ken Mackay, a medium pacer, did it (apparently not so much
as a thirteen-year-old). Chandrakant Borde, a spinner, didn't drag but sure
did something. Tony Lock, another spinner, managed to
combine both dragging and throwing. After the front-foot no-ball rule was introduced, you see dragging disappear almost completely, especially the Lindwall or Trueman-sized ones.
Like the chuckers, the draggers—as Peebles and by extension, Brookes, imply—might not have been consciously trying to gain an advantage. And yet, somehow, after authorities started cracking down on it, it went away. Compare
Fred Trueman, England's pace spearhead in 1962/63 to
David Brown, in 1965/66, or New Zealand's
younger attack in Trueman's last series. Although you can find exceptions (Shuttleworth, Lawson) dragging tends to disappear.
Frank Tyson had a large drag, the person who
succeed him in estimation as fastest bowler ever didn't, and looking at those 70s bowlers, I'd say that they do not drag their back foot nearly as much before landing their front foot at
1940s and
50s bowlers did, especially those not conforming closer to the classical side-on action which also began to die away at the same time. Nowadays, few even drag as much as Lillee or Hadlee (side-on, you'll note) did. Addressing dragging by a major change in the rules really eliminated it as a feature of cricket, even though you could make the same argument as Peebles and therefore Brookes make about throwing.
Incidentally, Lock was only called for throwing once in 1954, yet he was apparently widely regarded enough as one that Don Bradman used him as an example in 1958 to dismiss Freddie Brown and Peter May's informal complaints about Ian Meckiff. Fact is that, perhaps because of its seriousness, umpires were frequently very reluctant to do anything about it, and players would probably only push so far. Ian Meckiff was only called
after boards had stated a commitment to limit throwing; no umpire called him beforehand. Frank Chester wanted to no-ball
Cuan McCarthy but was instructed not to do so in order to maintain a harmonious tour:
apparently he was told doing so would see
him out of umpiring. As far as I know,
Jim Burke was never called. Yet I'd find it difficult to believe that he did not have some idea that he was unaware that some elbow extension was involved in his action. In one of those documentaries, Trevor Bailey reckoned that of all the state sides MCC played in 1958/59, only Queensland did not have a chucker in its attack. Those touring in 1962/63 seem not to have found reason to make such an observation.
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