Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/45

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OUT-DOOR GAMES

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.