Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/51

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OUT-DOOR GAMES

velopment 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