The Summer Field

132 Spin did have a place. In the Wolverhampton Express and Star in June 1938, Leslie Duckworth – in another example of the small world of English cricket, he was later a biographer of Sydney Barnes – urged England’s selectors to find the best leg-break bowler. ‘There are several players who can bowl beautiful leg breaks at times but the trouble with those fellows is that they are apt to be so erratic that before they produce the unstoppable ball Bradman may have got his century!’ Slower bowling was what you tried when faster men failed, as in July 1852 when Sheffield’s openers defied all visiting Manchester’s bowlers, ‘even slow bowling a la Clarke’, which was ‘quickly discontinued, for the second ball of that description was driven by Chatterton over the boundary wall’. Whatever the speed of bowling, the better bowler did something to outwit the batsman: swing, swerve, spin. While bowling slower could give you more control, the faster you bowled, the less time you gave the batsman. Either worked. In an advice column in July 1928, the Essex all-rounder Jack O’Connor wrote: ‘If you stand your ground against a fast bowler and your eye is good he is less likely to take your wicket than a slow bowler of equal skill.’ Professional bowlers had mastered movement within a couple of generations of overarm bowling becoming legal in 1864. In July 1894 the Torquay and Devon all-rounder and coach Harry Anscombe took three for 11 in his first 24 overs against Cornwall; ‘with a considerable break from the off and leg, he was very difficult to score from and he made the ball curl in the air,’ the Torquay Times reported. The only thing the batsmen could do, the report added, ‘was to play him with the utmost care’. Batting was not only about making runs; sometimes simply keeping out the bowler, until he tired, counted as success. As early as the 1840s, men could tell apart batting styles, whether judged by beauty, results or merely fashion. When Derbyshire beat Leicestershire in July 1846, the Derby Mercury described Mr Marshall as ‘one of the old school’, who made 17 ‘in a manly, John Bull style’. A contrast in the same fixture in July 1842 was Mr Hildyard, a young player of the ‘Etonian school’, who batted ‘most sweetly with a grace, force and ease rarely combined which called forth the strongest feelings of admiration from every cricketer present’. That suggests batsmen already had a choice; to play bluntly like a John Bull, or to apply ‘science and skill’ as a Mercury contributor put it after watching Burton beat Leicestershire Gentlemen in June 1861. * That Victorians recorded batting in more detail, in score books and in the press, suggests they cared more about it. How did players manage the unavoidable, terrifying fact, cricket’s equivalent of the fact we must all live with; that this day could be our last, because one day will be our last? An athlete running knew he would take so many minutes or hours to run a distance, and simply aimed to run his fastest; and at least as a bowler you might have more chances, even if one ball went wrong, if your captain let you bowl another over. One batting mistake might be fatal, or even no mistake if your batting partner ran you out. Plaindealer in July 1929 recalled that Burton’s ground, ‘as fast as fire’, took getting used to, like a strange table at billiards. If you fielded first, you could get away Batting and Bowling