Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

17 Chapter Two Clarke as a Bowler Although it was not until five years after his initial 1816 Nottinghammatch that Clarke is credited with capturing any wickets for the team, two years earlier he and Humphry Hopkin are reported to have opposed Simpson and Terry in a single-wicket match on The Forest. Simpson and Terry won with ease, but one must assume that Clarke fancied his bowling skills, for in single-wicket a player needed to be an all-rounder. There is no written evidence of his bowling style until the famous 1826 match v Sheffield and Leicester, when the Sheffield Independent notes: ‘Clark persevered in his old style of bowling, well pitched, but evidently too slow for the sharp- sighted Sheffielders.’ It is interesting that the reporter uses the term ‘old style of bowling’. We cannot tell whether this indicates that most bowlers were already employing round-arm and Clarke was continuing with under- arm, or whether Clarke was bowling slow, when most other bowlers bowled fast under-arm. Later commentators have stated that Clarke’s success in the 1840s and 1850s as a bowler was due to the fact that he was almost alone then as an under-arm bowler, nearly everyone by that time having adopted the round-arm style. The match of 1826 between Nottingham and the combined forces of Sheffield and Leicester is considered by the ACS as the first first-class match played by Nottingham. Nottingham had beaten both Sheffield and Leicester individually and clearly the standard of Nottingham cricket had risen to the point that the club felt capable of opposing the combined opposition, hence the decision to judge the match ‘first-class’ – a more detailed discussion on first-class status of matches played in the early nineteenth century can be found in the relevant ACS guide to important matches. With regard to the changing style of bowling during the same period, it is necessary to return briefly to the eighteenth century. The first extant set of regulations is that set out by the Duke of Richmond and Alan Brodrick for the matches between their two teams in 1727. There is no clause in those regulations specifying how bowlers should deliver the ball. The earliest extant set of ‘official’ Laws are printed round the border of a handkerchief, referred to as the Humphry handkerchief, in R.S.Rait Kerr’s splendid book The Laws of Cricket: Their History and Growth published by Longmans in 1950. Its date is unknown but might be about 1740. The date is not that important because when the Laws were first published in booklet form (in 1755) the details are the same except that the language is modernized. I am here quoting that 1755 booklet: The bowler must deliver the ball with one foot behind the crease, even with the wicket; and when he has bowled one ball, or more, shall bowl