Jump to content

Page:Cricket (Steel, Lyttelton).djvu/177

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
BOWLING.
155

wild young players than these widish off balls. But it is indeed a trying time for the bowler when he keeps pitching just outside the off stump, and is not even played at by the batsman. Bowlers should, in these circumstances, bowl ball after ball on the off stump and just outside it. It is by no means an uncommon occurrence to see these punishing batsmen taken in by a ball that comes in a little with the arm, and removes the bail while they are striking an attitude, bat over shoulder.

We have had some excellent left handed-bowlers in England, and there can be no doubt that every team should possess one of this sort if possible. Peate for some years enjoyed the reputation of being the best left-hander in England, and rightly so. He was an exceptional good length, difficult to see, and had a lot of work on. Some of his performances against the Australians are truly wonderful. When Peate first began to play cricket he was a very fast, high-actioned bowler, and the writer remembers thirteen or fourteen years ago finding him on the slow sticky wicket of the Carlisle ground very nasty to play. He subsequently altered his pace to slow, and it is a remarkable fact that, though a fast bowler once, and still a young man, he has now lost the power of sending down a really fast ball. Another of our great slow left-handed bowlers was David Buchanan, and, strangely enough, he too was in his early days a fast bowler. As one of the slow school he is best known, and we have no doubt that he at the present moment has taken nearly twice as many wickets in the course of his career as any other living cricketer. His bowling was celebrated for the great amount of work he got on to the ball; unless the batsman was on the pitch of it, a mistake was certain. The only team that ever seemed to enjoy Buchanan's bowling was the Rugby boys, and constant practice had robbed it of all terrors for them.

The best left-handed medium-paced bowler we have in England now in the writer's opinion is Briggs, the Lancashire professional. He possesses a marvellous strength of wrist and fingers, which give him great power of twist and pace. His