At last we have arrived, through devious paths, at our three great divisions. Many bowlers whom I class as slow may in reality consider themselves to be medium; many medium may prefer to be known as fast; and perhaps there may be a very few fast bowlers who prefer the description of medium—but I doubt it.
First and foremost we must place the Old Man, or Old ‘Un, as we so endearingly like to speak of him. There can be but few people in this country who do not know this full-bearded, full-bodied figure of a man—the few short shuffling strides, the arm a little above the shoulder, the right hand a shade in front of him, the curious rotary action before delivery, and the wonderful length.
The hand is large and the ball well concealed, and as you face him, for he stands full fronted to you, it seems to leave by the back door, as it were, that is, over the knuckle of the little finger.
I have played with him many times, but he does not seem to me to do very much (of course I am speaking of a good wicket), but some come a little higher, others a little lower, some a little faster, some slower; on the middle leg is his favourite spot—two or three off the leg stick with a square deep who is not asleep, then a straighter one with a “bit of top on it”—the batsman tries to push to leg—there is a somewhat excited ’s that? and the would-be run-getter is sauntering pavilionwards.
Certainly of all the slow bowlers I have met he is the most successful against new faces, whether they are young or old. He generally bowls them neck and crop, or else they are l.b.w., and it makes very little difference if the batsman is an Australian wonder, or a boy in a village school: they come in and they go out, and they can’t understand it—it looks so extremely harmless. They forget the master-hand, with the master-mind to work it; they forget the wonderful perseverance! If you can’t get them out over the wicket, try round; if you can’t succeed this end, have a rest and try the other.
To-day he may bowl a trifle slower than he did twenty years ago. It seems to me, however, that he bowls with very much the same effect. He is a bowler that stands by himself. As long as I can remember, no one has ever compared “W. G.” with any other bowler; he stands alone—it is a distinct form of attack. We hear of Rhodes being contrasted with Peel, and Peel discussed in relation to Peate, and so on in thousands of instances, but the Old Man stands by himself, with a style, a method, a success of his own.
Of really good amateur slow bowlers, during the last twelve years, in which time I have been more or less nearly connected with first-class cricket, there has been a phenomenal dearth.
They can literally be counted on the fingers of a man’s hand. As I write only two stand out—C. L. Townsend and C. M. Wells. Of course there have been others, and there are others, but unless I have missed my way through the long lists of bowlers through which I have passed, I have lighted on no names that, without some slight stretch of the imagination, one could place on anything like the same level with the two already mentioned. Should there be any, I sincerely apologise for their omission. A. G. Steel and E. A. Nepean never entered into my short first-class cricket experiences.
I have met them both, however, in club games, and even with the small amount of natural and acquired intelligence at my disposal, I could not fail to see how good they must have been at their best.
One feat of Nepean’s I remember well. He was playing for the Gentlemen v. the Players at the Oval. Arthur Shrewsbury was batting, and Nepean was bowling, if my recollection fails me not, at the gas-works end, and, greatly to the astonishment of many of us present, bowled him round his legs!