Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

84 Schwarz, who acquired in 1904 his fine reputation as a bowler of googlies – both in selecting him for the tour on the strength of his cricket at the Central South African Railways Sports Club, and then in allowing him to bowl when he was initially chosen as a batsman. At Oxford Reggie had always been telling me that he could bowl as well as Bose, so I chucked him the ball, and told him to have a try, being, I may say, very doubtful as to the result. He shot out Awdry first ball, clean bowled four others, ending up with five for 27 and never looked back.....When he returned to South Africa, every little boy in every school imitated him. There then came to the front also Vogler, our greatest bowler, Faulkner and White, all of whom showed that the googly could be bowled to a length with practice. I put down much of the development of what Charles Fry calls trick bowling to those overs of Schwarz at Oxford. He went on (writing in 1935) ‘Possibly they have been the root of the trouble which has taught our modern bowlers to neglect flight and length for paradoxical spin’. International cricket: South Africa in England, 1904 South African autographs from the 1904 tour reveal a clarity in handwriting not usually to be seen with cricketers’ signatures a hundred and ten years later.