Widish off balls are also useful, as a batsman going down the wicket is not only apt to miss, but also, if he can reach, to sky them. A high full-pitch into the hands of the wicket-keeper is likewise sometimes successful; but, though we may lay down certain rules and suggestions as to what is best for a bowler to do at this very trying time, we are afraid that, unless he is able to keep exceptionally cool, they will be of no practical assistance.
The variableness of the English climate plays a very important part in the success or otherwise of slow bowlers. A shower of rain in the night often has the effect of making particularly deadly a slow bowler who, the day before, on a hard and fast ground, was comparatively harmless and ineffective. Up to 1884 the disadvantage of a rainfall in the night to a side that had begun but not finished its innings was increased by the rule forbidding the ground to be rolled except before the commencement of each innings. Rain in the night not only softens the ground, but brings up to the surface numbers of worms, which cover the pitch with little heaps of earth mould. These little heaps, in the absence of any rolling, made the ground bumpy and treacherous, and consequently entailed serious discomfiture to the batting side. The only plausible argument ever advanced for this injustice was that it might happen to either side, and was one of the chances of the game. However, the M.C.C. wisely decided, though not till quite recently, that this rule should be abolished, the reason for the decision being that the side which won the toss had a great advantage as it was, from having the first and best of the wicket, and that, as the other side was usually batting at the end of the day, it gave the men an extra and unfair disadvantage in having the wicket spoilt by rain and worms without the chance of having it rolled. No rule, however, can affect the drawback under which a batting side is placed whose wicket is softened by a heavy rainfall in the night. The roller may level the worm moulds, but it cannot alter the slow, sticky state of the ground; in fact, it often brings up more water, and makes the pitch still more sticky and slow. It is on occasions such as these that slow bowlers meet with their greatest success. So frequently during the course of the season do these soft wickets occur, even in what are called our hot summers, that it is part of the science of bowling to know how to turn such grounds to the best advantage. The different states of the ground caused by the weather may be roughly, and for all practical purposes, divided into five: 1st, the hard and dry state; 2nd, the hard state, with the grass wet; 3rd, the very soft and slow state, (a) with the grass dry, (b) with the grass wet; 4th, the drying state, when it has been very slow and soft, but is gradually drying under the influence of a hot sun or wind; 5th, the hard and crumbled state. The hard and dry state calls for no comment, as everything written on the subject of bowling, unless otherwise specified, refers to the ground in this condition. The hard state, with the grass wet, is perhaps the most trying time for a slow bowler. He has to bowl with a wet ball, which he has great difficulty in holding; he cannot get on the slightest degree of twist, as the wet ball slips off the wet grass directly it pitches, allowing no time for the ball to ‘bite’ the ground and take the twist. A good batsman on these wickets knows that all he has to do is to play forward with a straight bat when the ball is anything like a good one, and he is bound to meet it. The slippery ball flies off the bat like lightning, and travels, if the grass is short and not too thick, over the hard ground faster than it does when the grass is dry. Every now and then a ball may be inclined to keep low or shoot; but a shooter does not possess the same terrors on a wet as on a dry ground, because in almost every instance it can be played forward to, and a good batsman in playing forward always keeps his bat low enough to stop shooters (especially on wet wickets) until he actually sees the ball rise.
The only course for a slow bowler to adopt on these wickets is to bowl as good a length as he can, and as straight as possible. He should also bear in mind that the ball leaves the ground far more quickly than usual in its wet, slippery state, and that, consequently, the most likely place in the field to capture a batsman is short-slip. Easy as the ground is for a batsman when once he gets the pace of it, it often happens that at first he is surprised at the great pace from the pitch, plays back instead of forward, and places the ball in the slips. It is a golden rule for every bowler, slow and fast, on these wickets to have short-slip ‘finer’ than on ordinary occasions, and a trifle further back. It is often advisable to have an extra man standing about three yards squarer than the regular short-slip, but no farther from the wicket. Two quick active men, who are capable at times of bringing off smart one-hand catches, should be chosen for these places. They are by far the most likely men in the field to dismiss good batsmen on wet hard wickets; in fact, it is often difficult to see how two such batsmen are to be separated on these occasions except by a catch at one of these places, or at the wicket. A bowler should with this object keep bowling a good length on the off stump and just outside it, recollecting that good-length balls must pitch considerably shorter than usual on these very quick wickets.
The very soft and slow state is the result of heavy rain which has left the surface of the pitch dry, but the ground itself thoroughly sodden. This condition of the ground is popularly supposed to favour a slow bowler. How often, on coming on to the ground to inspect the wicket after a night’s rain, is he accosted something in this style: ‘Well, Jack, this ought to suit you; those twisters of yours will want some watching to-day!’ Jack, after looking at the pitch, which is as soft and sodden as a piece of dough, knows full well that it will be a long time before the ground gets back enough of its half-drowned life to help him in the slightest degree. There is no poorer fun for a slow bowler than having to bowl on these utterly lifeless wickets. On a hard true ground, though it may be favourable to the batsman, he has good sport in trying every dodge he can think of; he fishes and feeds and angles as warily as Izaak Walton himself; the ground and ball are full of life and go, and very often, unfortunately for the bowler, the batsman too. On wet hard wickets, when he can get no twist on, there is still life and pace in the ground; but in the sodden dead state, directly the ball touches the ground it sinks in, loses all life and pace, and comes on to the batsman like what a Yorkshire professional was once heard to call a ‘diseased lawn-tennis ball.’ There is no greater fallacy at cricket than to suppose that a sodden wicket is an advantage to a slow bowler. The time when it begins to assist him is when the surface is ‘caking’ under the influence of the sun or a drying wind; and then it is that, as we said above, the greatest successes of slow bowlers are met with. A slow bowler having to bowl on a sodden wicket perceives at once that it is extremely difficult for him to bowl to a good batsman a ‘good-length’ ball for the following reasons:—
What is called a ‘good-length’ ball on ordinary occasions remains on the ground so long and comes off the pitch so slow that a batsman, if he is so minded, can with ease play it back—i.e. he can see it coming on from the pitch in time for him to get back and play it as a simple ‘long-hop.’ Anything short of this will all the more be capable of being played as a ‘long-hop.’ If the ball is pitched farther than a good length, it becomes at once—certainly to batsmen quick on their legs—a half-volley. Thus, if a batsman really gets the time of the ground, he has only to play these two simplest of balls. No amount of spin will help the bowler; the ball in the soft ground may twist at right angles, but it does it so slowly that the batsman has ample time to defend his wicket. In these circumstances there is only one thing for a slow bowler to do, and that is to bowl faster and endeavour, by giving extra pace to the ball, to make it come off the ground quicker. There are some batsmen whom, on these sodden wickets, it is almost impossible to get rid of. They remain for hours, perfectly contented if a whole day is taken up with their innings and forty runs added to the total, the chances of a draw being thereby greatly augmented. A famous professional stick, on one occasion, remained at the wickets when the ground was sodden for one hour and fifty minutes before troubling the scorer; he was then so flustered by the jeering of the mob that he rushed out, hit a catch, was missed, and, amidst as much cheering as if he had wanted one run to complete his hundred, broke his duck’s-egg. Louis Hall, of Yorkshire, was a desperate man to bowl to on these grounds; every ball that was bowled he either played back or smothered. Nothing in cricket could be more dull or dismal than bowling to this batsman on a sodden wicket at Bramall Lane Ground in a real Sheffield fog. A. Bannerman, the Australian batsman, is another terrible hard nut for a bowler to crack on these sodden wickets.
Although, as has been said, slow bowlers are not assisted by the ground when in this condition, and it is extremely difficult to bowl anything approaching a good ball to a good batsman, there are some batsmen, and real good ones too on a hard true ground, who are utterly unable to adapt their style of play to a slow ground, or rather never can realise that a ball pitched into a lump of dough will leave it much slower than when pitched on to a stone. These batsmen, if they kept their keenness of eye and activity till they were a hundred, would still be seen playing a quick forward stroke on the sodden ground, sending the ball up in the air in every direction. A batsman who persists in playing forward on a dead wicket and finishing his stroke as he would do on a fast wicket is certain not to last long. It is very curious to notice how sometimes nearly a whole batting side will make a mistake about the condition of the wicket. The first batsmen see the ground slow and the ball twisting a good deal, and begin playing as they would do on a faster wicket, viz. playing forward to the pitch instead of waiting and playing a back game. Four or five batsmen will follow, play in the same style, and lose their wickets, generally bowled, or caught and bowled. Some batsman will then come in who at once finds out what the slow bowlers have long since known—that it is a slow easy wicket he has to bat on, and not a ‘caked,’ ‘kicky’ one. What happens? He plays every ball back except those that he hits, and he hits everything except a long-hop, because he can get to the pitch of anything else. The slow bowlers who have been doing the mischief are soon knocked off, and his side, in spite of the failure of its four or five most competent batsmen, makes a good score. On one occasion in a first-class match the first seven wickets fell for fifty runs, the wicket being deadly slow and dull; the eighth man came in, and, by dint of playing back and hitting and a little luck, made over a hundred in about an hour and a half, being fortunate enough to have some one to stick in with him at the other end.
When the ground is very soft and the grass wet, the bowler is in about the same position as when the grass is wet on a hard wicket; he has to bowl with a wet slippery ball, and cannot get any twist at all upon it. This is called the ‘cutting through’ state, which means that, the ball being slippery and the ground and grass wet, it cuts through the surface of the pitch, taking with it a small piece of wet sticky turf. As in the hard state with wet grass, short-slip is an important place and likely to get chances. Although the ground when in this condition is in favour of the batsman, cricket is miserable under such circumstances, and is enjoyed neither by batsman, bowler, nor fielders. The batsman cannot stand on the slippery mud; the bowler, with wet dirty hands, and boots and trousers bespattered with slush, is utterly unable to do anything with the slimy ball; and the fieldsmen can neither hold nor stop it. The ground is covered with sawdust, without the use of which it would be impossible for the bowler to grasp the ball firmly, and altogether the whole scene is so unlike cricket, essentially a fine-weather game, that it always seems a pity under such conditions to go on playing.
The drying state, when the ground has been very soft and sodden, but is gradually drying and caking on the surface under the influence of a hot sun or wind, is the time when slow bowlers have it all their own way. It is on this condition of ground that in former days bowlers like Alfred Shaw, and Peate, of Yorkshire, and in present times Tyler, Briggs, and Wainwright, have so often astonished the cricket community with wonderful analyses. When the ground has got into this state, it will often remain so for several hours. At Lord’s, when the ground after being soft has become caked on the top, it is no unusual occurrence to see thirty good wickets or more fall in the course of the day. When a side, no matter how many really good batsmen it may number, has to go in on ‘caked’ wickets against good bowling, they may think themselves lucky if they get 100 runs. The ball takes almost as much twist as a bowler wants to put on; it comes off the ground at different paces, one part of the pitch being a trifle drier and harder than another. The first ball of the over will perhaps get up almost straight and very quickly from the pitch as a batsman is playing it; the next pitches a trifle shorter, may stop in the ground, and ‘get up and look at you,’ as it is called, making correct play an impossibility. Or perhaps one ball will get up very quickly and high, and hit the batsman on the arm or side, and the next, pitched in almost the same spot, will leave the pitch equally quickly, but never rise more than an inch from the ground. It is no recommendation to a bowler to be able to get wickets on such grounds as these; any bad bowler might bowl a good batting side out for a small score with such assistance. The only way a batsman can reasonably hope to add any notches to the score of his side is to grasp the situation at once, throw careful correct play to the winds, and hit, pull, and slog in every direction where he thinks he can get rid of the teasing ball. The Australian eleven of 1882 were particularly good on this class of wicket; they had four men—Giffen, Bonnor, McDonnell, Massie—who, rarely needing much inducement to hit, used to launch out most vigorously and successfully on these occasions, often cracking up twenty or thirty runs in about half the number of minutes, and securing victory for their side.
Although very badly caked wickets are not uncommon, perhaps the best for bowling and the worst for batting in modern experience was at the Oval during the last innings of the England v. Australia match, in 1882. It is the only disastrous match for England in the whole list of national fixtures that have been played in this country. It may be remembered that England, having only a few runs to get to win, nearly made them for the first two wickets, Grace and Ulyett both making about twenty. The ground at this time was drying and becoming every minute more difficult, and the way in which our English wickets were mowed down by Spofforth is now a matter of cricket history, too well known to repeat. Spofforth was bowling rather more than medium pace, bringing the ball back a foot or more very quickly from the pitch, sometimes kicking to the height of the batsman’s head, and at others shooting. Some of our cricket reporters talked in an airy manner about the ‘funk’ of the English team on that occasion, but the charge was wholly without foundation. A batsman’s consciousness that twenty thousand spectators were watching each ball with breathless interest, and that on his own individual efforts depended the reputation of English cricket, that the bowling was about as good and the ground as bad as any cricketer had ever seen, might, and probably did, cause a feeling of intense anxiety in the minds of each of the English players who failed in his efforts to win victory for his side; but to say that their efforts were paralysed, or that any one of them was unnerved by what is popularly called ‘funk,’ is certainly unjust to the well-tried cricketers who did battle for England on that memorable and disastrous occasion.