This is instructive comment, as to the style of batting previous to 1780—that is the date that it appears we must fix for the change of style that brought batting in touch with modern theories. But by the way we ought to notice that Beldham spoke of the fielding as being very good, even in the oldest days of his recollection, and Mr. Pycroft is careful to add a note saying that this praise from Beldham was high praise indeed, and eminently to be trusted, as Beldham’s own hands were also eminently to be trusted, whether for fielding the ball on the ground or for a catch.
But with the year 1780 we come to a new era in the art of batting, associated more particularly with the name and art of a famous bowler, David Harris, the association being again an illustration of the truth, which has several times already been in evidence, that it is the bowling that is the efficient cause in educating the batsman—that it is the bowling that “makes the batting.”
“Nowadays,” said Beldham to Mr. Pycroft, “all the world knows that”—namely, that the upright bat and the left elbow up and forward is the right principle of batting—“but when I began there was very little length bowling, little straight play, and very little defence either.”
Beldham was a boy in 1780, and even before this, Harry Hall, the gingerbread-baker of Farnham, of immortal memory, was going about the country preaching the great truths about batting. May be he was but little listened to. At all events it is certain that until men had the straight bat to play with and the length bowling to contend with there can have been little opportunity or demand for straight batting.
“The first lobbing slow bowler I ever saw was Tom Walker,” Beldham says. “When, in 1792, England played Kent, I did feel so ashamed of such baby bowling, but after all he did more than even David Harris himself. Two years after, in 1794, at Dartford Brent, Tom Walker, with his slow bowling, headed a side against David Harris, and beat him easily.”
AN EARLY TICKET.
| From a Drawing by | Wm. Fecit. |
WILLIAM AND THOMAS EARLE.