by nature, for these need hardly any teaching at all. Any boy who has a reasonably good eye may be made into a batsman quite capable of getting plenty of runs on modern easy wickets by practice and good coaching, but this is by no means true of bowlers. Everyone who knows anything about cricket and has watched the game for some years, can call to mind many cases of batsmen who have been good enough to play in the best company, but who owed this to perseverance, good coaching and much practice and not to their natural gifts. This is not the case with bowlers to anything like the same extent. Personally I am sceptical about the possibility of any of the great qualities which make a real good bowler being taught at all; they must be in the boy by nature. Something may be done, such as telling the youngster not to tire himself by bowling too fast or taking a run of fourteen yards or more instead of eight, but the magic gifts of spin and turning of the ball are gifts of the gods and not from anything man can do. So we see year after year ten good or at any rate effective batsmen brought out to one bowler. Spin, i.e. pace off the ground, is perhaps the greatest gift which goes to make a great bowler and is a mysterious thing. Nobody knows whether it comes from the hand, wrist, arm, shoulder, or from a combination of all these, but one fact is certain. It is the first thing to go, and it goes very likely never to return if the bowler, especially the fast bowler, is overworked. Loss of spin alters the bowler from greatness to mediocrity; overwork brings on mediocrity sooner than it ought, and there hardly exists a fast bowler who is not overworked at the present time.
