MR. JAMES HENRY DARK.
(The Proprietor of Lord’s Cricket Ground, 1836-1864).
T. HUNT, OF DERBYSHIRE, d. 1858.
In this connection Mr. Pycroft writes as follows: “‘Fennex,’ said he”—“he” being Beldham again—“‘Fennex was the first who played out at balls; before his day, batting was too much about the crease.’ Beldham said that his own supposed tempting of Providence consisted in running in to hit. ‘You do frighten me there jumping out of your ground,’ said our Squire Paulet; and Fennex used also to relate how, when he played forward to the pitch of the ball, his father ‘had never seen the like in all his days,’ the said days extending a long way back towards the beginning of the century. While speaking of going in to hit, Beldham said: ‘My opinion has always been that too little is attempted in that direction. Judge your ball, and when the least overpitched, go in and hit her away.’ In this opinion Mr. C. Taylor’s practice would have borne Beldham out, and a fine dashing game this makes; only, it is a game for none but practised players. When you are perfect in playing in your ground, then, and then only, try how you can play out of it, as the best means to scatter the enemy and open the field.”
So says Mr. Pycroft, a very high authority, and one whose instructions to the batsman are very sound and worthy of the very highest respect. No doubt he is right in his cautious counsel—human nature is prone to err on the side of rashness—but he does not notice the indisputable fact that it is easier to meet the ball at the pitch, if you can reach it, than later—always supposing it is not a rank long hop. He is rather inclined to treat this principle of getting out to the pitch as a counsel of perfection, and perhaps it is more easily put in practice now that wickets are more perfect than in his day, though if you really go out far enough—and unless you can get so far as to command the ball, however it break, it is surely better not to go out at all—the most troublesome ball has not time to develop much of its dangerous eccentricity before you have met it. Of course there is always the chance of missing it, and then there’s the wicket-keeper’s opportunity.
But, all details of prudence apart, there is no doubt that we have here a totally new departure in batting, devised, as is usual, to meet some new requirements on the part of the bowler. A very kindly, genial, remarkably honest man—a really loveable man—was this potter, David Harris, though he did say, in chaff, that he liked to “rind” Tom Walker, and certainly he was an epoch-making bowler, for he made the ball come off the ground with an underhand action in the very way that is the study of our overhanders. He was a good sportsman too, and when he had the pitching of the wicket, tried to give Lumpy, at the other end, a brow to bowl over, while he chose for himself a brow to pitch against. No one ever seems to have hinted that Harris’s action was a jerk, though there were jerkers in the world in those days.
Beldham and Fennex, then, were the first to pick up the new style of going in to meet the pitch of the ball, and so prevent its jumping up “and grinding their fingers on the bat.” Hitherto there had been good hitting, but all inside the crease, cutting and drawing to leg. Small had his bat straightened for the special purpose of making the draw stroke better. But hitherto there had been no idea of driving a shorter ball than a half-volley. Now first was developed the idea of going in to drive the ball and of forward defensive play; and therewith, as I conceive, the batsman’s art became, in its principles, pretty much as Mr. Warner found it when his school coach began his education.