Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

19 Upon one occasion when I had come up to London, I heard of a match being played in Lord’s Ground, and of course made one of the spectators of my beloved amusement. Andrew Freemantle was in, and one of the new-fashioned bowlers, commonly called throwers, was bowling to him. His name was Wells [actually Willes], and I believe he came out of Sussex. He was the first I had seen of the new school, after the Walkers had attempted to introduce the system in the Hambledon Club. No date is given for this match, but Freemantle’s last major game was in 1810. It was in the published Laws of 1811 that the ruling on the style of legal bowling first appears: ‘The ball is to be bowled under-hand and delivered with the hand below the elbow.’ However, several years later, when players clearly ignored this Law, a revised, more complicated version was issued (probably in 1816): The ball must be delivered underhanded, not thrown or jerked, with the hand below the elbow at the time of delivering the ball. If the arm is extended straight from the body, or the back part of the hand be uppermost when the ball is delivered, or the hand horizontally extended, the umpire shall call No Ball. Rait Kerr attributes this new law to William Ward and states that it is an example of how not to frame a law. Rait Kerr continues: This enactment was a tactical blunder which was soon to cause trouble; the difficulty over the earlier law was not due to its wording, but to the weakness of the captains in allowing, and of the umpires in not stopping, illegal practices, which to-day [1947] would be dealt with by a MCC instruction to players and umpires. As a result players continued to flout the law. Such flouting is succinctly described in Lord Harris’s The History of Kent County Cricket under the biography of John Willes, where a sentence reads: ‘When he (Willes) played on the side of Lord Frederick Beauclerk his bowling was fair: when against him the contrary.’ Willes finally snapped during the match between MCC and Kent at Lord’s in July 1822 – Lord Frederick was playing for MCC, Willes for Kent. Willes was no-balled when bowling early in the match and stormed off the ground. He played little cricket after that game. John Willes played as an amateur for Kent. After he had retired another Kent amateur, G.T.Knight, took up the round-arm cause. The detailed correspondence which was published in the Sporting Magazine is reprinted in Denison’s Sketches of the Players. Denison also gives the following preface to the details of three games played in 1827 and this preface explains the situation: For the last three years there has not been so great an interest excited with the lovers of this manly game, as within this month (June 1827), on account of the grand match which has lately been made between All England and the County of Sussex, for 1,000 guineas a side, to be decided by three trials. The two first have been played, and both ended in favour of the County – at Sheffield by 7 wickets, and at Lord’s by 3. Clarke as a Bowler