Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

18 to the number of four before he changes wickets, and he shall change but once in the same innings. He may order the player that is in at his wicket to stand on which side of it he pleases, at a reasonable distance. If he delivers the ball with his hinder-foot over the bowling crease the umpire shall call no ball, though it be struck or the player be bowled out; which he shall do without being asked and no person shall have any right to question him. (I have set out this paragraph in full in order to emphasise the absence of any directive regarding the height of the bowling arm.) Pycroft quotes Beldham as saying: ‘When I was a boy say 1780 nearly all bowling was fast and all along the ground.’ Beldham goes on to state that ‘The art of bowling over the bat by length balls originated with the famous David [Harris].’ Pycroft however qualifies this remark by saying that length bowling was introduced in David Harris’s time, and by him first brought to perfection. Nyren describes Harris’s delivery: He would bring the ball from under his arm by a twist and nearly as high as his armpit, and with this action push it, as it were, from him. How it was the balls acquired the velocity they did by this mode of delivery, I never could comprehend … in the prime of his playing he very rarely gave a toss, although the balls were pitched a full length. In bowling he never stooped in the least in his delivery, but kept himself upright all the time. His balls were very little beholden to the ground when pitched; it was but a touch and up again, and woe be to the man who did not get in to block them, for they had such a peculiar curve that they would ground his fingers against the bat … He was considerably faster than Lambert, and so superior in style and finish that I can draw no comparision between them. Harris first appears in matches printed in Haygarth’s Scores and Biographies in 1782, though Nyren states Harris began playing in matches arranged by the Hambledon Club in 1778. He died in 1803 aged 48. Nyren, in his notes on the Hambledon players, includes the following passage dealing with Tom Walker: About a couple of years after Walker had been with us, he began the system of throwing instead of bowling, now [ i.e. 1833] so much the fashion. At that time it was esteemed foul play, and so it was decided by a council of the Hambledon Club, which was called for the purpose. Thomas Walker was born in 1762 and his first match for Hampshire (or the Hambledon Club) given in Scores and Biographies is in 1786. If Nyren’s comment is correct then 1788 would be about the year when the Hambledon Club ruled round-arm bowling illegal, but no such edict appears in the Laws of that date – indeed J.Wallis’ broadsheet of the Laws printed on 25 May 1809 still contains the precise wording for bowlers as given in 1755. By 1809, according to Pycroft, John Willes had been bowling round-arm for seven years. Nyren mentions Willes in his notes on Andrew Freemantle: Clarke as a Bowler