Out-door Games: Cricket and Golf/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
Development
Cricket has developed as fast as any other game, much faster than football, racquets, or golf—at least that is my opinion. There have been several stages in its development, and the first and most important stage came into existence in 1827, when the game was about fifty years old, and underhand bowling was displaced in favour of round-arm. Nyren speaks of David Harris as the greatest bowler he ever saw, but here is Nyren's description of his bowling:—"First of all, he stood erect, like a soldier at drill; then, with a graceful curve of the arm, he raised the ball to his forehead, and drawing back his right foot, started off with his left. His mode of delivering the ball was very
CRICKET AT LORD'S IN 1822.
singular. He would bring it from under his arm by a twist, and nearly as high as his armpit, and with this action push it, as it were, from him. How it was that the balls acquired the velocity they did by this mode of delivery I never could comprehend."
With all our respect for the old chronicler it is not easy to follow this description. No human being could produce a fast ball by a push from the armpit, but probably David Harris and several others did not stick to real underhand bowling. The best lob bowler I ever saw was V. E. Walker. Nobody could call V. E. Walker's bowling strictly underhand, and if I have been correctly informed Clarke's was not either; but lob bowling is classified as underhand, and it certainly is not round-arm. In the case of V. E. Walker the arm was slightly bent and a little raised. In strict underhand bowling the hand and elbow are in a straight vertical line; but if the arm is bent in such a way that the elbow is outside and the hand swung slightly away from the body the result may not be round-arm bowling, nor is it real underhand like A. W. Ridley, W. M. Rose, or Osbert Mordaunt. In the case of the last three bowlers the arm was stretched at full length, but of David Harris's bowling one may infer from Nyren's description that the arm was shortened by bending the elbow backward, which may have produced the armpit theory. But though the strictly underhand bowling may have been slightly varied, and though the wickets were rough, batting got too much the upper hand, and after a fierce controversy round-arm bowling came in in 1827, and was called throwing by its opponents. William Lillywhite and Jem Broadbridge of Sussex are the two names which may be conjured with, for if they did not invent round-arm bowling they at any rate were the first who brought it into first-class cricket. There were three matches played that year between Sussex and England, and Sussex won two; and we may well be surprised to read that the leading players of England, after the second match, signed a petition against the Sussex throwing, when Lillywhite's bowling was what we should call slow medium, quite fair in its delivery, and not by any means likely to hurt the batsman, for Lillywhite being a short man, there could only be a minimum amount of bump. After this year (1827) the old-fashioned fast underhand bowling went out of fashion, and even lob bowling went to the wall. The superiority of round-arm bowling became so manifest that bowlers went into the opposite extreme, and it was not until the famous William Clarke bowled his lobs with astonishing success against all classes of batsmen that lob bowling came in at all. In this respect cricketers were like other people who desire to have and practise some new thing, and when they get it ignore utterly the old practice and the old science.
In these days we keep men at high salaries who have brought wickets to a perfection of smoothness which our forefathers never dreamt of. Last century the old Hambledon Club played for many years on Windmill Down, which sloped down hill on all sides from the centre, and this Nyren admired, as it sharpened up the fielding; the bowlers too selected the wickets, and we read that it was part of the craft of a bowler that he should be able to select the wicket which should suit his own bowling. Nyren quotes as an instance of David Harris's genius, "that he not only could choose a wicket to suit his bowling but that of his colleague as well." Beldham lived till the year 1862, and no man that ever lived could have seen such changes as he did. William Caffyn, in his very interesting book "71 Not Out," mentions how old Beldham walked seven miles to see a good match at Godalming in 1852. I should have liked very much to have had a talk with the old man: he had seen Lord Frederick Beauclerk, William Lambert, Fuller Pilch, and George Parr bat, and Lumpy and David Harris, William Lillywhite, Redgate, Hillyer, Clarke, and Jackson bowl. In fact Beldham saw every stage of development of the game, except overhand bowling and the modern billiard-table wicket. Caffyn describes him as walking in a beautiful clean white smock-frock, and such a sight would have aroused all the sentiment of one's nature.
If you go to Lord's you will see specimens of the primitive bats; they were thin in the handle, very heavy and thick in the blade, and entirely adapted to a driving as opposed to a wrist style of play. It is a curious fact that among impending changes there are many who advocate a reversion more or less to this shape of blade by making the bat narrower and thicker. But in the earliest days the bowling was mostly fast underhand, and much of it along the ground, or "sneaks," and the only way to deal with bowling such as this was to drive it forward—to cut was impossible. Beldham remembered those days and spoke of the cricket with contempt, and indeed it probably was dull to men like Beldham who saw the next stage of development. But to the historian there is a picturesque side, and many of us can remember something of the same sort of match in the south of England on the village greens, when the spectators used to sit smoking churchwarden pipes, with beer in china jugs on small round tables, and when many a match used to be finished in one day.
William Lillywhite and Broadbridge, as I have said, brought in round-arm bowling; and with no heavy rollers or mowing machines invented, I should think it probable that many bowlers were successful who were nevertheless not possessed of great skill. Readers must have a proper sense of proportion and make a little allowance, but there is a great deal of truth in the remark that is made in 1900, that any fool can get runs now and any fool could have got wickets between 1830 and 1860, and the state of the grounds is the reason and the cause of this. Old Lillywhite, Redgate, Hillyer, Mynn, William Clarke, Jackson, and many others, were grand bowlers, fit to be compared with the best of any time and country, but the plodding, medium-pace, straight round-arm bowler, who kept a fair length and hammered away at the wicket, met with his reward and success in those days between 1830 and 1860, which he certainly does not meet with now, I saw Gentlemen v. Players both at Lord's and the Oval in 1866. Though there was great variety of bowlers, there was little variety in the bowling of any one bowler, who would be content with what I should call pounding away. Speaking of thirty years ago, the bowler who perhaps more than any other was famous for general accuracy and good length was Jemmy Grundy of Nottingham. Grundy never bowled for catches; he was strictly round-arm, and was far more successful on Lord's—which then was a ground favouring the bowlers, owing to its natural slope from north to south—than he was at the Oval.
On most grounds then a bowler could find a spot, and a ball pitching on that spot would sometimes shoot, sometimes hang, and sometimes bump. Grundy was successful because he could find such spots; but if he bowled now in such weather and on such wickets as we have seen in 1899, I say with confidence he would have been played all day with ease. Conversely, a man who plays fairly straight, can hit tolerably hard, and can meet the ball with the bat when it comes on straight with no hang or bump, but half stump high, goes in now and gets maybe 30, 60, or even 100 runs; but there are many such playing now whose captain, if he had been playing at Lord's between 1850 and 1870, would have rejoiced if he made 10.
As there are dozens of batsmen who can make hundreds now to the one batsman of forty years ago, so the general result is, in fine weather, drawn matches, and this fact has forced the hand of the lawgivers, and changes will be made. This will be dealt with fully in a subsequent chapter; but in talking of the development of the game after the introduction of round-arm bowling in 1827, with rare exceptions drawn matches were unheard of unless caused by bad weather, and this state of things was the case up to, at any rate, 1880. The Duke of Dorset in 1784 got up an eleven to go to the Continent to play, I suppose, the French—though I have never heard of or seen any of our lively neighbours play cricket—but they were stopped at Dover by a revolution. Cricket in France was stopped by a revolution: I may be wrong, but I cannot conceive any revolution preventing the University match from coming off in England: but until 1859 no English eleven ever went abroad or to the Colonies to play cricket. There was not nearly so much cricket. Matches, as a rule, were finished in two days, and the ordinary cricketer could, and frequently did, play twenty years and more. The average life of a cricketer was sixteen years; now, it is probably not more than ten.
I quoted James Grundy as a specimen of the straight plodding type of fast medium-pace bowling, but I perfectly well recollect his bowling, in Gentlemen v. Players at Lord's in 1866, to A. H. Winter, and being hit three times to leg in two overs, and a fieldsman being accordingly put there. I infer from this that the most accurate bowler of thirty years ago is not to be compared in this respect to the modern bowler. In these days a man may hit to leg, but he does so off straight balls; in 1866 such a stroke was considered an outrage and was never seen, E. M. Grace always being excepted. Grundy therefore bowled sometimes to leg; J. T. Hearne, Mead, and Lockwood practically never give a ball off which George Parr would have made the orthodox leg-hit. Here, then, is another instance of development in first-class cricket: leg-hitting has been removed out of the game. A very beautiful thing to see was fine leg-hitting, and its disappearance is a calamity. One reason, and I think the strongest, for the bowling in old days being more off the wicket, was that it is easier to bowl straight when bowling with the hand right over your head than it is when bowling on a level or below the shoulder. In overhand bowling the hand moves up and down in a straight line between hand and wicket; in round-arm bowling this is not the case, as anybody can see who takes a ball and makes the attempt. It requires more practice to bowl the ball where you want it to go if you bowl round-arm than it does if you bowl overhand, and the fact that bowling with the hand over the shoulder was not allowed before 1864 makes it obvious that the old bowling—that is, the round-arm bowling between 1830 and 1860—was more off the wicket than now. As a matter of fact, the straightest bowler in those days was the most killing. As bowling makes the batting, or creates the level that batsmen reach, it may be inferred that as the wickets certainly were not so easy, only the batsmen with real talent could become famous. You may now coach a boy with fair eyes and aptitude for the game and good nerve to such a degree that he becomes a prolific scorer, but this was not possible in the old days. Very seldom indeed in a first-class match did any but a really good bat get 50 runs; and, as I said before, a captain would rejoice if many a man who can now get long scores scraped up 10 in 1860—at any rate on Lord's.
James Grundy, when Jackson bowled at Lord's, would sometimes stand well away from the wicket and hold the bat with one hand, being indifferent whether the ball were hit or not. This is reported by William Caffyn in the book quoted before, which is well worth perusal. Grundy evidently liked to bowl at Lord's but bat on the Oval. Once in Gentlemen v. Players, C. G. Taylor got out owing to a ball of Hillyer's hitting him on the hat and knocking it on the wicket. What would Abel and Hayward think if that occurred now? It no doubt did then require pluck and nerve to stand up to Jackson on Lord's, but it must be borne in mind that, though the bowling was as fast as it is now, up to 1864 it was not above the shoulder, and this to my mind makes the whole difference. If I had to play on a fast bumping wicket, I would far rather play a very fast bowler with a low action than I would play a fast bowler with a high action over the shoulder. I honestly believe that the bowling of Richardson, Kortright, Jessop, and Jones, the Australian, on what Lord's was sometimes in old days, would have resulted in fatal accidents.
I may take the period from 1830 to 1860 as marking out a long stage in development; but in 1864 another stage arose, namely the introduction of overhand bowling, and this alteration of the law is the latest change that has been made in the interests of the bowler. As there was a period of about thirty years when round-arm bowling held the field, so now, after the lapse of another thirty years, overhand bowling has taken its place. Of course in the thirties there were plenty of bowlers who, like J. H. Kirwan, bowled with a very low arm, so in the sixties and seventies there were plenty of round-arm bowlers. But in 1899 hardly any bowler exists who does not bowl right above his head. The Australians were the pioneers of this style, and I never heard of an Australian with a low action. It is probable that overhand bowling may be the most difficult to play, but in adopting entirely the overhead system of bowling and discarding round-arm bowlers have in my opinion made an error. The whole essence of modern bowling is variety. We see all paces, all heights, and all the different forms of twist and break, but the stamp of bowler, who bowled round the wicket, and kept the arm on a level or a little below the level of the shoulder, and made the ball come with his arm, is practically extinct. About the year 1844 there were two famous umpires, Dark and Caldecourt, who held different views on the important question of leg before wicket, and the question became so acute that during the progress of a match at Lord's the matter was referred then and there to the M.C.C. Committee. The result was that the ruling was made that the ball must pitch in a straight line from wicket to wicket, not from hand to wicket; thus making it difficult for a round-arm bowler, bowling round the wicket, to get a man l.b.w. Scoring was kept within reasonable limits in those days by the fact that wickets were not so true, owing to the mowing machine not having been invented nor the heavy roller, and bowlers bowled round the wicket as well as over. Now, however, there is no doubt that inability to get a man out l.b.w. has handicapped round-the-wicket bowling, and this rendering of the l.b.w. rule made by the M.C.C. about 1844 has had far-reaching effects on the development of the game, for it has been the principal cause of the disestablishment of round-the-wicket round-arm bowling.
Batting, as I have said before, is made and formed by the bowling, so in its development it has adapted itself to the style of bowling it has had to meet. Up to the year say 1870 there was a prevailing method of round-arm bowling, and fast round-arm bowling, as I have said, is more difficult to keep dead straight and accurate than is overhead. This fact made it unnecessary for batsmen to hit in any style but what may be called the orthodox; there was no pulling either of the pitched-up ball or the long hop; and I can well remember murmurs of disapprobation in the Lord's Pavilion when a ball was hit across the wicket. An off ball was hit to the off, an on ball to the on, and for about twelve years every batsman got a fair share of balls to hit. About the year 1874 there arose another feature of bowling, which was that, instead of being mainly fast or medium, it became slow. Shaw, Southerton, Peate, Bates, Flowers, Watson, and many others may be quoted as flourishing at this time, but why fast bowling should have gone out of fashion so much as it did I cannot quite explain. All fast bowling was child's play to W. G. Grace in the days of which I am speaking, when he was in his prime, and this was perhaps the reason. But whatever the cause, slow bowling came to be the prevalent style, and the best way to get wickets was to pitch good length balls outside the off stump, and have most of the fieldsmen on the off side. This then marked another stage of development, because batsmen, to avoid the trap of being caught on the off side, began to cultivate the pull or cross-wicket hitting, unheard of a few years previously, but now becoming easier as wickets improved. In 1878 the first Australian Eleven came to England, and though Englishmen were slow to learn the lesson, they came to realise that variety was the loadstone to look for. Variety of pace, variety of pitch, but no variety in the height of the arm—that was the stamp of bowling that we learned from the Australians, and the first English bowler who brought it to a high pitch of skill was Lohmann.
For the last seven or eight years we have had a series of dry seasons, and the art of making perfect wickets has reached a climax. Bowlers are beginning to despair, there are all styles and all paces, but the bat triumphs, and the beginning of the twentieth century under new regulations and changes of the game will begin a new era. I may put in a tabulated form the various stages of development since the beginning of the game and approximate dates. 1750 to 1827—primitive wickets, fast underhand bowling, heavy bats, driving in front of wicket. 1827 to 1860—wickets smoother but still not good, round-arm bowling as a rule medium pace to fast, giving plenty of balls to hit, free batting, plenty of cutting and leg-hitting, 1860 to 1880—overhand and preponderance of slow bowling, heavy roller and mowing machine and improvements in wickets, slower batting. 1880 to 1900—every variety of bowling made easy by the billiard-table wickets, plethora of runs and very rapid scoring, combined with batting of the slowest and most sticky nature.
Such, briefly speaking, is the main feature of cricket development, and our readers will gather from what I have said that the main cause of all development is the gradual improvement of the wickets, which has gone on ever since the beginning of the century, but which has improved by leaps and bounds since the discovery of the mowing machine and the heavy roller. There was one ball common enough in the sixties at Lord's and not uncommon on other grounds, and this was the shooter. The shooter is absolutely as extinct as the Dodo, and one reason why mediocre bats can now score so freely and could not forty years ago is because mediocre bats could never stop shooters. How shooters were produced is a matter on which great difference of opinion exists, and which I cannot quite explain. Some people think that the balls were not quite so round and well made as they are now; I myself think it probable that wickets eaten off by sheep and mown with the old-fashioned scythe was the explanation. The mowing machine shaves the grass like a razor; there are no little tussocks of grass, as was the case formerly, hardly visible but nevertheless existing; there was something for the ball to bite; but whatever the cause, every now and then both fast and slow balls, on touching the ground, instead of rising, became as it were glued to the surface and hit the bottom of the wicket, and I have seen a ball remain there, an inch or so in front of the stump, humming like a top and twisting round and round. Some shooters no doubt were impossible to stop, especially when combined with a break back. Such shooters as these may be easily remembered by those who saw the University match in 1870, when S. E. Butler, bowling from the pavilion end, got all ten Cambridge wickets at a cost of under four runs per wicket, several of them with balls that shot dead and broke down hill. There was indeed some credit to a batsman who got runs under these circumstances.
I have hitherto written about bowling and batting, the development of the latter being entirely dependent on and governed by the development of the former. It must not be supposed, however, that fielding has not developed very much in the same way and from the same causes. Between 1827 and 1878 the fields were placed in very much the same positions. I mean by this that to a slow bowler there was a fixed method of placing the field, as there was to medium and fast bowling. A little variety might be made by a particular bat with a particular hit, such as George Parr leg-hitting; but, as a rule, to fast bowling there was a mid-on and a mid-off, a cover-point and a short-leg, point, short-slip, wicket-keep, long-slip, long-stop, and long-leg. If a great cutter came in, long-slip would probably be moved to third man; if R. A. H. Mitchell came in, long-leg would be placed deep square-leg. As there was always a long-stop even to what we should call slow medium bowlings so did the wicket-keep always stand up to the wicket. It was also the custom to observe a certain routine according as the bowling changed ends. For instance, the same man fielded long-leg one end and cover-point on the other, all other fields kept the same places—mid-on and mid-off, and long-stop, for instance, crossing over and fielding the same place both ends. A very different state of things is seen now. Practically the ball never bumps nor shoots, and is never on the leg side; the wicket-keep can therefore with ease do without a long-stop to all but the fastest bowling, and when this is on he falls back and takes up a bastard position, a sort of mixture of wicket-keep, long-stop, and short-slip. The post of long-stop is disestablished; we see short-slip one end fielding out deep in the country when bowling is at the other end, we never see a long-leg or a deep square-leg; neither is there, strictly speaking, a mid-on or short-leg, but one fieldsman who tries to cover both places. There are two short-slips, and the only fieldsman who invariably occupies the same place, whichever end the bowling, is the wicket-keeper. The cause of all this change or development is not entirely the greater perfection of the wicket, it is largely due to the system of boundaries. I cannot quite remember in which year the system of boundaries came into vogue, but I think it came earlier in some grounds than in others, and its introduction was one reason why deep long-leg and square-leg were abolished. The Australians who came over in 1878 caused a development in our bowling system, but that was not the only lesson we learned from them. They never bowled on the leg side, and they had an astonishing wicket-keep; and for the first time in the history of cricket was seen a sight at which the old cricketers rubbed their eyes—a wicket-keep standing up to fast bowling without a long-stop. It was an astonishing feat to do at that time, when the wickets were not so perfect as they are now: it would not have been possible at Lord's before 1872.
At the time of writing this chapter, after the season of 1899, the difficulty of getting batsmen out on the smooth wickets is so great that bowlers have been driven to try methods incompatible with the true science of the game. They are not altogether to be blamed. As I have said before, any fool can get runs now, and human nature being what it is, bowlers will bowl whatever seems most likely to get wickets. So fast bowlers pound the ball down, very short, very fast, with the hand as high as nature will allow, to get the batsman caught behind the wicket; but the ball is nothing more nor less than a long hop, and to bowl a series of long hops is not bowling, according to all well-established canons of the art. In the same way slow bowlers, in endeavouring to get as much twist on the ball as possible, have sacrificed all length and precision, and in some cases are driven to bowl outrageous bad balls in order to tempt an Abel or a Noble to hit the ball up. When cricket has arrived at this stage of its development it is time for reforms to be made, but this must be reserved for another chapter.