John and James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Companion 1882

— * 36 s friends u hint for heating O sbaldeston at his own B rown of Brighton, who, with F uller F ilch , T om II earne , and others should redeem tailordom from its traditional jokes,and Mr. W ard claimed’ to have given hi game. H kom ' n was very fast; yet without gloves or pads, old F eldham , when above fifty, scored sixty-five off him, in days, remember, when grounds were rough. L illywiiite heat F rown at single w-ickct, standing nearly -00 balls equally unprotected. Then we had Mr. I virwan , of King’s College, Cambridge, who, like F row n , howled with a kind of jerk, though keeping within the law. Then came Mr. H arvey F ellows , whom no one of the players could face on such a ground as Loan’s was in his day. Mr. H artopi *, who was recognised as “ F ellows ’ s long-stop,5’ for few' could he found equal to that post of danger, said he could hear the ball humming like a top. But faster than F rown , as Mr. F ldd declared, and I believe faster than any, was Mr. M arcon , an Etonian. My friend J ohn M arshall had pads extra thick to stand long-stop to him with the Lansdownc (Bath) Club. Of Mr M arcon ’ s pace, hear a notable witness, II enry G race :— “ Standing at point I could hardly follow the hall with my eye; and one day, when others quailed before Mr. M arcon , a stout young farmer came boldly in, holding his bat over his shoulder, and said, ‘ See if I don’t have a hit at him.’ 'flic first ball took his hat out of his hand and clean through the wicket! ” As to pads and gloves, underhand bowling was. less erratic and more easy to avoid with the legs—add to this, few' men played as often as men piny now. They could not save their wickets with their legs as they do nowr. Without pads, the play before the legs instead of the draw could not have been very common. The fast bowlers mentioned were exceptions. The ordinary pace of underhand bowling was much less, while at Oxford 1831-5, nearly all the bonding was overhand, and though I extemporised padded finger-stalls for one hand and a pad for an ancle, and turo or three others did much the same, pads and gloves, even for wicket-keepers, wi re unknow n. With two exceptions abovementioned, O sbaldeston and F rown , all through the days of Lord F rederic and Mr. F udi >, from 1805 to 1825— when the round-arm came in —*1 never heard of any bowlers who depended much on pace. Lord F rederic , F cdd , F eldham , and L ambert were the principal bowlers, and neither of them was much above C larke ’ s pace or Mr. F idley ' k . Lord F rederic was the slowest of these. He depended on an abrupt rise, as well as great accuracy and on his knowledge of the game. H pajckes told me that a very sharp return from H ammond , who stepped in and hit straight, shook Lord F rederic ’ s nerve, and he was not the same man afterwards. Still, he played too long, till, like others, from age he lost his spin, and no length will prove very effective when spin is gone. Lord F rederic ’ s play I never saw, hut I have played against F udd , and K> m " him well; and since, B arker , the famed Nottingham umpire, told me that C larke was only a specimen of the old school revived, and since G lare 1 also told me tliat L ambert , and also W aksoe , a Nottingham bowler, wcjtj as good or better than he was, J am able to judge what the best of the °^ howling really was. So 1 can truly say that w'e have bad no slow howln'r bA C larke ’ s worthy of the name since the round-arm bowling was nitr ' • Ineed, simply because slow bowling has never been taken up in carnefi