The hard and crumbled wicket is perhaps almost more difficult for batsmen than when it is caked. The ball will twist a great deal on this class of wicket, and does it very quickly. It is also inclined both to ‘pop’ and keep low. Spofforth and Turner of the Australian bowlers, and Peel, Briggs, and Attewell of the English ones, are all most deadly bowlers on such a wicket as this.
Some of our most successful slow bowlers have been left-handed. The peculiarity and difficulty about left-hand bowling is that the natural spin imparted to the ball by a left-handed bowler is the off-spin, which, of course, makes the ball after the pitch twist from the leg side of the right-handed batsman to the off. This, as we have mentioned above, is the most difficult twist for a batsman to play, as an off break is more easy to watch after the pitch than a leg-break. The leg-break which a batsman has to meet from a right-handed bowler is not so difficult to play as that from a left-hander; because, first, the latter is usually faster than the former, and, secondly, it is much more disguised. The right-hand leg-break is impossible without getting the ball in the centre of the hand and screwing the hand round just as if it were twisting a corkscrew the reverse way—an action which at once prepares the batsman for the leg twist. Thirdly, because it usually twists very much less than the right-hand leg-break. It is not the ball which twists the most that gets the wickets; it is the ball that just twists enough to beat the bat.
The mode of attack generally adopted by a slow left hander is to place all his men, with the exception of a short-leg and a deep mid-on, on the off side. He then proceeds to bowl on the off stump and outside it, making the ball go away from the batsman to the off as much as possible after the pitch. Great care has to be taken by the batsman, as the slightest mistake in hitting or forward play will give a catch to one of the numerous traps laid all round on the off side. It is the object of the bowler to get the batsman either to hit at a ball which is not quite far enough to be smothered, or to reach out and play forward at one which is a little beyond his reach. A favourite device of the left-handed bowler is to get the batsman to hit at widish ones on the off side, a stroke that must cause an uppish hit somewhere, as it is impossible for a batsman to smother a ball that is a trifle out of his reach. It is often a good thing for a left-handed bowler to send down a ball without any twist on it at all, especially if he is bowling on a wicket where he is able to ‘do’ a good deal. The ball without any spin on it should pitch on the middle and off stumps; and if the bowler is bowling from round the wicket, as left-handers usually do, it will then come on in a line with the pitch and the hand at the moment of delivery, and if not stopped by the bat, take the leg-stump. This slow ball that comes with the arm in the middle of others going the other way is very successful. Slow left-handed bowlers often have their tempers sorely tried by a class of batsmen that were discussed in a previous portion of this chapter, namely, those who are so frightened of getting out that they will never play at an off ball, long-hop, half-volley, or good-length. There are many enticing balls bowled by left-handed bowlers that ought to be left alone by every batsman, notably those that pitch too wide to enable them to be played forward and smothered. There is no greater or more successful trap for 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 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 after this alteration he completely 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.
It is a doubtful point amongst cricketers whether Peel of Yorkshire or Briggs of Lancashire was the best left-handed slow to medium bowler. In the writer’s opinion Peel was the best. He bowled perhaps a slightly better length than Briggs, and as he had a more difficult action to see, was not so easily hit by a resolute batsman as Briggs. They were both, however, excellent bowlers, but both are now a little past their prime. Briggs possesses a marvellous strength of wrist and fingers, which give him great power of twist and pace. His very fast ball is nearly as good as that of Palmer, the Australian. One of his best performances was in England v. Australia at Lord’s in 1886. None of the English bowlers on this occasion could do much with the ball except Briggs. There is one Australian left-handed bowler who we regret has never been seen on English cricket grounds—Tom Kendall. In 1878, when the first colonial team visited this country, great accounts of Kendall’s prowess with the ball had reached us. His name was included in the list of the players whom we were led to expect, but for some reason or other, though he did actually start with the team, he left it at Adelaide or at some other port at which the ship touched. The writer saw him and played against him in 1882 in Tasmania, and, though getting on in years and rather on the big side for bowling, he was about as nasty a left-hander as any batsman could wish to play. He had a high action, changed his pace well, from slow to medium, and then to very fast, had lots of work both ways on his slow and medium balls, and the very fast ones went with the arm. When the writer saw him his length was not as good as it might have been, or, from all accounts, as it once was. His action reminded us rather of that excellent bowler J. C. Shaw, in his day the best left-hander in England.
In the first Australian team that visited this country, in 1878, there was another left-handed slow bowler named Allan, about whom the Australians themselves spread most extraordinary statements. It was said that Allan, ‘the bowler of the century,’ as he was called in Australia, possessed some of the most remarkable qualities. Rumour declared his spin off the ground was so great that the slowest ball came off up to the bat at ten times greater speed than it had travelled to the pitch; that he could twist either way, to almost any degree, at will, and that his bowling had a most remarkable curve in the air, which rendered it most deadly. This left-handed bowler is mentioned because, though his powers of bowling had, of course, been greatly exaggerated, it was certainly most puzzling. He met with some considerable success at the outset of the tour; but subsequently his health gave way before the wearing work of cricket every day, and he was unable to bowl at all. His bowling had a considerable amount of spin, but what was the most extraordinary thing connected with it was the inward curl in the air towards the body of the batsman, and then, after the pitch, the outward twist of the ball. A ball that goes one way in the air, and another after the pitch, is calculated to try the mettle of the best batsman. It is a subject for regret that Allan, through increasing years and his consequent inability to stand hard work, has not accompanied any of the later teams, as his bowling was so very different from anything we have ever seen at home.
Does bowling curl or twist in the air? is a question we have often been asked, and we have frequently heard disputes, by men who possessed some considerable knowledge of the game, as to whether it was possible for balls to travel thus or not. It seems almost incredible that men who have over and over again handled the bat should doubt the tendency of some kinds of bowling to twist or curl in the air. Nearly all leg-break slow bowlers curl inwards towards the batsman before the pitch, and no one who has ever played against W. G. Grace’s bowling can doubt that the real secret of his success as a bowler has been in the peculiar flight his action gives the ball, causing it to curl before it pitches.
However, the question as to balls turning in the air has been definitely settled by the American base-ball players. In this game the pitcher throws one full-pitch after another to the batsman, and even if the latter happen to be one of the best and most experienced in the game he misses a considerable proportion of these full-pitches. And why? because of the twist or curl in the air which the pitcher imparts to the ball. A very interesting account is given by Mr. R. A. Proctor in ‘Longman’s Magazine’ for June 1887 of a well-known English cricketer’s failure to strike the full-pitches of one of the best American pitchers. Time after time the bat struck the air and nothing else; and this was simply owing to the curl the pitcher put on the ball. Mr. Proctor scientifically explains the curl in the air, and it may be of interest to insert a short extract from his article:—
When a ball (or in fact any missile) is advancing rapidly through the air, there is formed in front of it a small aggregation of compressed air. (In passing we may remark that the compressed air in front of an advancing cannon ball has been rendered discernible—we can hardly say visible—by instantaneous photography.) In shape the cushion of air is conical or rather conoidal, if the ball is advancing without spin; and therefore it resists the progress of the ball equally on all sides, and only affects the ball’s velocity. The same is the case if the ball is spinning on an axis lying along its course. But in the case we have to consider, where the ball is spinning on an axis square to its course, the cushion of compressed air formed by the advancing ball has no longer this symmetrical shape. On the advancing side of the spinning surface the air cannot escape so readily as it would if there were no spin; on the other side it escapes more readily than it would but for the spin. Hence the cushion of air is thrown towards that side of the ball where the spin is forwards and removed from the other side. The same thing then must happen as where a ball encounters a cushion aslant. A ball driven squarely against a very soft cushion plunges straight into it, turning neither to the right nor to the left, or if deflected at all (as against a billiard cushion) comes straight back on its course; but if driven aslant against the cushion, it is deflected from the region of resistance. So with the base ball. As the cushion of air against which it is advancing is not opposed squarely to it, but is stronger on one side than on the other, the ball is deflected from the region of greatest resistance.