Having myself started in my early days with the firm conviction that this old game of cricket was the best game for boys and men of moderate years that the ingenuity of generations had invented, I became also convinced that to be a great bowler was the highest pinnacle of fame, and at the same time of usefulness, that a cricketer could hope to rest on.
The work, without doubt, is hard, the labour of the day strenuous, but the pleasure of bowling a length with the wicket a bit in your favour, with a side that are trying to field, and not loafing as “little mounds of earth or waxen figures in a third-rate tailor’s shop,” is a goodly thing, a thing to dream of. And this craft of bowling is so sure, so certain. A great batsman may make a mistake, even on the Oval in the height of summer, even on the Oval in the height of perfection—and all those that have played there know the miraculous opportunities for run-getting this ground affords—he may make a mistake, let us say, bowled Richardson, 0! Well, for the day he is done—up to now of no use to his side, of no use to himself. Now, take the great bowler on a wicket of this excellence, or of any other. He can make a mistake, drop a slower one a bit too short, overpitch the well-intentioned yorker, falter in his stride and be placed to leg for four. What matter from a selfish point of view? His fun for the day has not departed. He bowls and bowls, and continues to bowl; and probably the blind goddess gives in the end the wherewithal to be cheerful. Therefore, on this miserable lowest ground of self-interest, be a bowler!
And then again, when he has done a noble thing—or perchance it is his birthday, and the elements give heeding to his call—there falls, let us say, a gentle rain in the early-bird hours, and a hot sun scorches from 10 to 12. He has got his money on a two to one chance (and nobody else in the race)—Peel, Rhodes, Haigh, Jack Hearne, the wonderful George Lohmann, and dozens more. What does the other side make? They are lucky to make 100—lucky to make 70!
To be a bowler on a bit of bird-lime is the biggest certainty the cricket world has knowledge of. You may meet a Ranjitsinhji, a Bonner, a Jessop, or a Frank Crawford; but if you don’t meet these, the odds on you are as the odds on an arc light to a farthing dip.
Again—for a moment to raise the platform on which we have been discussing so casually this selfish side of the bowler’s existence—there can be little doubt that of the three branches of the game (batting, bowling, fielding), bowling is the pivot on which the other two turn. Who is the more use to his side—the great batsman or the great bowler? Nine out of ten intelligent beings answer unhesitatingly, the bowler; and rightly too, especially if he be of medium pace, or even slow medium, on a great variety of wickets, ranging from the fiery, cast-iron, stone-strewn rock of an Old Trafford wicket (I don’t mean for a second that the Old Trafford ground is often in this state, but when it is, it is a little faster, a little more susceptible of bump, than anywhere else I know) down to Bristol or Southampton after a wet day, he is invariably of supreme assistance to his side. And what a number of graduated shades of differing wickets there are, from the sun-scorched cracking clay, where the fast bowler finds your fingers, or failing these your ribs, where your runs are made through the slips or first hop over their heads to the boundary, down through the varying degrees of good, natural, fast wickets to the Valhalla of batsmen, let us say Taunton, the Oval, or Bristol, where the ball rarely rises stump high, and where there is as much life in the wickets as there is in a barrel of oysters! On grounds like these the batsman assuredly cometh into his own, and metaphorically layeth the bowler by the heel, bruising him hip and thigh through the weary hours of an August day, till the welcome news of the last over revives the rag of a man that is left, and he slowly wends his way to the rabbit-hutch, in sore need of the well-earned bath and its ensuing rub down—in sore need of a ginger beer. Perhaps there are too many of these superexcellent wickets; perhaps, from certain batsmen’s point of view, there are not. But the moment the rain appears, the bowler is another being; in the language of the card-room, he wears a four-ace smile, and there is a corresponding depression in the countenance of the great batsman. All down the still more numerous phases of wet, sticky, and real bird-lime wickets (impossible for nine out of ten batsmen)—down through all these the four-ace smile remains, and it is only when we arrive at the thoroughly sodden ground, with a faint drizzle or slight showers at convenient intervals, when the ball is wet, the footholds greasy, and there are bucketfuls of sawdust besprinkled here, there, and everywhere, that the batsman again reverses the situation, and, like an overfed fox-terrier, has acquired another poor rat of a bowler.
I say overfed advisedly—not that he is replete with runs on too many occasions in an ordinary season, when a fair amount of rain falls, and the good and bad wickets are allotted us fairly evenly, and a decent percentage of catches are held (which is very seldom the case); but when he glues himself for a day or day and a half to some easy-paced billiard-table wicket, where a blind boy could stay with a toothpick, I say he is overfed—he gluts himself with runs; and though, as I have said before, he has, in my humble opinion, less chances of distinguishing himself than the medium-paced bowler, and is in consequence of less value to his side (which, after all, is the very essence of the game), yet when his opportunity arises he overeats himself to an astonishing degree, and often grouses to a similar extent as the rat of a bowler catches him by the tail with a duck and one on a wicket of sun-baked clay.
I have sorely digressed, but the trend of the digression was this, that if as a youth you wish to play cricket, devote all your time, all your energies, to bowling. A great bowler is born, not made; but though you may never soar to the heights of a Spofforth or a Lohmann, you can learn to bowl a good length, you can learn to bowl intelligently, and be a source of comfort to yourself, and, what is infinitely better, in all probability a source of comfort to your side.
We have divided the bowlers of to-day and yesterday into four: it were better to say three, leaving the few dealers in lobs to huddle themselves into a minute band that can nowadays follow many leagues behind the great cavalcade that comprises the real three divisions. Lobs are occasionally useful things to carry round with a side, but should in a healthy team be used medicinally.
They act as a stirring tonic to men in the field who have grown lazy and careless from lack of work, for with all the lobs I have ever seen there is always a blissful uncertainty as to where a good batsman will place the next one; and some players hit them so uncomfortably hard that it is best for the slackers to keep their weather eyes open, or they may experience a rude awakening. There is no more exhilarating spectacle on a cricket-field than to see a drowsy dreamer of a field receive the ball in a most unexpected place, on the wrist or the ankle, on the nose or somewhere where the injury is not likely to be serious.