George Hirst, I think, stands in a section of fast bowlers entirely his own. It is a curious thing that we possess so few really fast left-handers. Hirst is equipped not only with great pace, but also with an extraordinary swerve, that is to say, he does not always have it under his immediate control, but when starting fresh and with a new ball, he swirls inwards in a stump-uprooting manner, and the swerve seems to take place in the last two or three yards of the ball’s flight. I remember seeing Captain Bush confront him last year at Leeds for the first time. Hirst came up to the wicket with his swinging run, the ball left his hand; Bush’s left leg shot out for his slashing stroke by cover, and it was only by astonishing luck that at the very last moment he stopped a yorker almost behind his right foot, and in stopping it overbalanced and lay prone—thus emphasising the luck he had experienced and the amount of the swerve. With a new ball it usually stays with him from twenty minutes to an hour, and it can occur again after a sufficient rest and the acquisition of another new ball. I think I am doing Rhodes no injustice when I say that for some time now Hirst has dismissed, largely through this swerve of his, more of the first five or six batsmen than have fallen to his, Wilfred’s, lot.
Of all the really fast amateur bowlers none have given me so much pleasure to watch as Sam Woods. At Brighton College they tell me he was quite as fast as he ever was afterwards all through his first-class career as a bowler. Personally I experienced the same luck as many another would-be run-getter who met him for the first time, that is to say, I went in to bat and came out again without having heard the sound of the bat striking the ball, b. Woods 0! The pace was bewildering. At his best and in full health he was as fast as an ordinary player cares to encounter. Exceedingly even in temper for a fast bowler, there were only one or two little things that really worried him. One, however, was to see a man draw away as he came up to the crease with those short shuffling strides he always adopted. I shall never forget one day at Fenner’s in some trial match a rather nervous performer against fast bowling wobbled to the wicket. Sam was bowling over the wicket, and the newcomer, who practically relied on a very late cut for scoring purposes, promptly planted him for two or three fours through the slips, having first withdrawn, at the approach of “the Terror,” in the direction of the square leg umpire. The same sliding motion at right angles to the wicket, the same stroke, the same lucky four, and Sam goes round the wicket. If fast at first, he is faster now, and the nervous player is still more nervous. The ball comes down well clear of the leg stick, and is cut behind the wicket and between the wicket and the stumper!—a truly miraculous stroke, and one that I have never seen executed save on this solitary occasion. Four! but the next was straight, and it crept a bit, and the nervous batsman retired, having, however, before his departure credited himself with fifty or so on the sunburnt “tins.”
Of W. M. Bradley, there is nothing to be said—a natural fast bowler with the mind of a man and the strength of a bull. I faced him two years ago at Canterbury. He was bowling against the pavilion and against the sun; the slope of the ground went with him, a new ball was in his hand, and it whizzed down the pitch as it left it. It was about the most uncomfortable ten minutes I ever spent. They came “down the vale” with a four-inch off break; they grazed one’s ribs, one’s chest, one’s nose; and at last I was caught in the slips protecting my eye with my hand. It was on this occasion that I was truly convinced of what a grand player Tom Hayward is against really fast bowling. Though we were easily beaten, he made 97 not out! Good boy!
There are many more in this our third class that I should like to write about, but space and the clock forbid, and so perforce am I compelled to halt awhile and wait for the little cavalcade of “lobsters” that are so far behind, so very far behind, the pressing throng of modern bowlers. To quote from Wisden:—
We, the solitary few who still strive to hold upright the tottering pillars in the ruined temple of lob bowling, unto whose shrine the bowlers of the olden time for ever flocked, to-day we are but of small account; there is scarcely a ground in England where derision is not our lot, or where laughter and jaunting jeers are not hurled broadcast at us. To-day perhaps to an all-powerful side we are of little use—to a side that is weak, to a side whose special weakness is its fielding, we are the strychnine of tonics. By himself stands Simpson-Hayward, for he “flicks” the ball as we have all seen many a wrathful billiard-player do when returning the white from a most unexpected pocket—it spins and spins and breaks sharply from the off, and it sometimes hits the wicket. There are two more, Wynyard and myself, and we both bowl in the old, old way, and we bowl with a persistence born of tentative success—occasionally we hook a fish, and great is our rejoicing. We are both fond of this bowling, I particularly so, and when on many a ground throughout the country there has arisen on every side the gentle sound of “Take him orf! Take him orf!” were it not that the side ever comes before oneself, I would bowl, and bowl, and bowl, until at eventide the cows come home.—
D. L. A. J., Wisden, 1902.
| From a Painting by | C. J. Basébe. |
KENNINGTON OVAL IN 1849.