Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

34 The Bowler effective against it as well as with it and across it. 63 The combination of fast and slow bowler to open an innings is rare today, but, as Grace said: Never put two fast bowlers on to start with, especially if they both bowl over the wicket; nothing gets a man’s eye in better than two fast bowlers on a plumb wicket. Begin with a slow bowler and a fast one. 64 ‘Crusoe’ referred to the ‘enviable ease in his bowling, with the lolloping run and the tireless wheel of the arm’. The Cricketer claims that already ‘as a boy he had the most beautiful delivery for a slow medium-paced bowler’. 65 ‘Delightful ease’ and similar expressions appear with great consistency in reports. Still in the latter 1930s he ‘had a nice, easy action’, as Dawkes remembered, and Kemp says that in 1946 at Tonbridge his run-up and delivery were ‘easy and graceful’. I can find no reference to the length of his run in his early days. A ‘lolloping run’ for a spin bowler suggests somewhere in the region of eight to ten paces; and Eric Snow remembered a ‘straight run, eight paces, something like that’ during his heyday. As he approached his own half-century this run, at least in the nets, had been reduced to a mere three to four steps in Dawkes’ recollection and three in Philip Snow’s. Sperry said that Astill’s advice to youngsters in the nets was ‘to bowl side-on, not like this fellow’ (we were watching Simon Brown of Durham at the time, who, he agreed with me, ran up more like a javelin-thrower). Astill’s arm came over high until the late 1930s when his middle-aged muscles perhaps demanded its slight lowering, 66 and he never essayed the round-arm ball beloved by his post-war off-break successor in the Leicestershire side, the Australian Vic Jackson. According to Sperry he advised one to ‘bowl at the stumps, get your arm right up, brush your ear with it: the higher the ball the more it deviates’. A high arm would also, of course, help a bowler obtain greater bounce, very useful for one of Astill’s only moderate stature. The slight evidence available suggests that at the moment of delivery he had the full weight of his body over a braced front leg, an important element in achieving spin. The illustration in Frith’s collection shows him having just delivered the ball over the wicket with his backside almost touching 63 R.E.S.Wyatt, who played a lot against and with him, said that he was most effective against the wind, Snow that he preferred the wind behind or transverse. 64 Quoted in The Leicester Sports Mercury , 27 December 1924. 65 Vol. 2 (1922), 26 August, p 7. 66 Dawkes said that his arm was always high, but Snow remembered it somewhat lowered. An illustration showing Astill’s bowling action.