And this Walker, by the way, was a wonderful fellow in more departments of the game than one. A terrible stick, but very hard to get out—very slow between wickets, so that one of the old jokers said to him, “Surely you are well named Walker, for you are not much of a runner”—a moderate jest, but showing the sort of man he was. Then he was “bloodless,” they said. However he was hit about the shins or fingers, he never showed a mark. Only David Harris, that terrible bowler, made the ball jump up and grind Tom Walker’s fingers against the handle of the bat; but all Tom Walker did then was to rub his finger in the dust to stanch the reluctant flow of blood. It is all very grim and Homeric. David Harris, rather maliciously, said he liked to “rind Tom,” as if he were a tree stem withered and gnarled. And it is a marvellous fact that a man of this character, whom you would call conservative to the core of his hard-grained timber, should actually have invented something new. But he did. He first tried the “throwing-bowling,” the round-arm, which was credited to Willes—probably an independent invention, and so meriting equal honour—many years after. Well may Nyren speak of the Walkers, Tom and Harry, as those “anointed clod-stumpers.” Harry was a hitter, his “half-hour was as good as Tom’s afternoon.”
And meanwhile what has become of David Harris? David Harris, it is said, once bowled him 170 balls for one run. And what manner of balls were these? Let us consider a moment a description of David Harris’s bowling culled from Nyren. Parts of it lend themselves to the gaiety of nations, and the whole description, if not very lucid, is full of terror. “It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to convey in writing an accurate idea of the grand effect of Harris’s bowling”—the effect, as a matter of fact, is conveyed a deal more clearly than the way in which it was produced. “They only who have played against him can fully appreciate it. His attitude, when preparing for his run previously to delivering the ball, would have made a beautiful model for the sculptor. Phidias would certainly have taken him as a model. First of all, he stood erect as a soldier at drill; then, with a graceful curve of the arm, he raised the ball to his forehead”—singular and impressive ritual—“and drawing back his right foot, started off with his left. The calm look and general air of the man were uncommonly striking, and from this series of preparations he never deviated. His mode of delivering the ball was very singular. He would bring it from under the arm by a twist, and nearly as high as his arm-pit, and with this action push it, as it were, from him. How it was that the ball acquired the velocity it did by this mode of delivery, I never could comprehend.”
Nor any one else either, for Harris was a very fast bowler. But I am inclined to think that there must have been some explanation to be discovered out of the fact that he was by profession—before cricket became his profession—a potter. With the strength of fingers that the potter acquires through working at his clay, he may have had the power of putting an amount of spin on the ball impossible for men whose digits had not gone through this course of training. In underhand bowling such as, after all is said, Harris’s must have been, the spin is almost entirely the work of fingers. The turn of wrist had little share in it; for one thing, it was forbidden to deliver the ball with the knuckles uppermost.
And so it may well have been that, whatever the pace with which the ball was propelled, by these singular and statuesque means, through the air, it may have carried so much spin as to leap up twice as fast off the ground, as a billiard ball with much side on will seem to gain twice as much life after touching a cushion. And all that we read of Harris’s bowling shows that the balls did come off the ground with tremendous speed.
“His balls,” says Nyren, in another place, “were very little beholden to the ground when pitched; it was but a touch, and up again, and woe be to the man who did not get in to block them, for they had such a peculiar curl that they would grind his fingers against the bat. Many a time have I seen the blood drawn in this way from a batter who was not up to the trick. Old Tom Walker was the only exception. I have before classed him among the bloodless animals.”
We have seen, however, that even from him Harris occasionally drew blood.
In Harris’s day it was the custom for the bowler to choose the wicket, and it was always his preference to have a bump to pitch on, and so help this rising tendency of the ball off the pitch. Of course this would be the recognised aim of a bowler of to-day, but it was not so recognised then, and indeed Stevens, nicknamed “Lumpy,” generally regarded as the second-best bowler to Harris of his day, always liked to bowl “o’er a brow” in order to make his balls shoot. The result was, as Nyren points out, that Lumpy—Lumpy of the honestly avowed preference for bowling “o’er a brow”—would hit the wicket oftener, but that more catches were given off Harris, though his balls often went over the wicket. But there was no manner of doubt as to which was the finer bowler. Harris was the man.
And now as to its effect on the batting. Notice these words of Beldham, for really they contain the kernel of the whole matter: “Woe be to the man who did not get in to block them, for they had such a peculiar curl that they would grind his fingers against the bat.”
And again he says the same in more distinct words: “To Harris’s fine bowling I attribute the great improvement that was made in hitting, and above all in stopping, for it was utterly impossible to remain at the crease, when the ball was tossed to a fine length; you were obliged to get in, or it would be about your hands, or the handle of your bat, and every player knows where its next place would be.”