Cobbett gave a ball as much spin as possible: his fingers appeared wrapped round the ball: his wrist became horizontal: his hand thrown back at the delivery, and his fingers seemingly unglued joint by joint, till the ball quitted the tips of them last, just as you would spin a top. Cobbett’s delivery designed a spin, and the ball at the pitch had new life in it. No bowling so fair, and with so little rough play or violence, ever proved more effective than Cobbett’s. Hillyer is entitled to the same kind of praise.
A spin is given by the fingers; also, by turning the hand over in delivering the ball.
A good ball has two motions; one, straight, from hand to pitch; the other, on its own axis.
The effect of a spin on its own axis is best exemplified by bowling a child’s hoop. Throw it from you without any spin, and away it rolls; but spin or revolve it against the line of its flight with great power, and the hoop no sooner touches the ground than it comes back to you. So great a degree of spin as this cannot possibly be given to a cricket ball; but you see the same effect in the “draw-back stroke” at billiards. Revolve the hoop with less power, and it will rise abruptly from the ground and then continue its course—similar to that awkward and abrupt rise often seen in the bowling of Clarke among others.
Thirdly, revolve the hoop as you bowl it, not against but in the line of its flight, and you will have its tendency to bound expended in an increased quickness forward. This exemplifies a low swimming ball, quickly cutting in and sometimes making a shooter. This is similar to the “following stroke” at billiards, made by striking the ball high and rotating it in the line of the stroke.
Such are the effects of a ball spinning or rotating vertically.
Now try the effect of a spin from right to left, or left to right: try a side stroke at billiards; the apparent angle of reflection is not equal to the angle of incidence. So a cricket ball, with lateral spin, will work from Leg to Off, or Off to Leg, according to the spin.
But why does not the same delivery, as it gives the same kind of spin, always produce the same vertical or lateral effect on a ball? In other words, how do you account for the fact that (apart from roughness of ground) the same delivery produces sometimes a contrary twist? “Because the ball may turn in the air, and the vertical spin become lateral. The side which on delivery was under, may, at the pitch, be the upper side, or the upper side may become under, or any modification of either may be produced in conjunction with inequality in the ground.”
With throwing bowling, the ball comes from the ends of the fingers; why, then, does it not spin? Because, unlike Cobbett’s delivery, as explained, wherein the ball left the fingers by degrees, and was sent spinning forth, the ball, in a throw, is held between fingers and thumb, which leave their hold at the same instant, without any tendency to rotate the ball. The fairer and more horizontal the delivery the more the fingers act, the more spin, and the more variety, after the pitch. A high and unfair delivery, it is true, is difficult from the height of the rise; otherwise it is too regular and too easy to calculate, to make first-rate bowling.
A little learning is a dangerous thing—and not least at cricket. The only piece of science I ever hear on a cricket field is this: “Sir, how can that be? The angle of reflection must always be equal to the angle of incidence.”