Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

20 Clarke as a Bowler On the part of England there are one or twomen fromthe neighbourhood of Sheffield, who have displayed great skill, and convinced the cricket world that the South must not, as heretofore, presume to wear the wreath for ever. On the part of Sussex there are some very fine players; but their victories have been, undoubtedly owing to a singular, novel, and perhaps we may say, unfair manner of bowling, by the over-cast from the arm, instead of the under-hand and graceful mode of the Old School. There has been considerable discussion on this point, − whether it could be allowed, and whether it shall be continued to be practised. The writer of this, an old cricketer, really shakes with fear of its adoption, as it certainly gives birth to the hope of gaining a wicket by chance, by a wild twist, instead of the fine steady length, as shown us in former times by Lumpy, Harris, John Wells, &c. It is true, these men could twist, but there was not that space taken by chance, as at present. The general complaint of the hitting now being so much superior to the bowling, can alone justify the experiment; and it is on that account it has been brought forward. England beat Sussex in the third game, at Brighton on 23, 24 and 25 July 1827, by 24 runs. Two Sussex bowlers delivered the ball in round-arm style in all three matches; G.T.Knight bowled round-arm for England in the second and third matches. The impossibility of operating the Law as amended in or about 1816 led to it being changed in May 1828 to: ‘The ball shall be bowled. If it be thrown or jerked, or if any part of the hand or arm be above the elbow at the time of delivery, the umpire shall call ‘No Ball’.’ This simplified adjustment had little effect on the march towards round-arm bowling, but it was not until May 1835 that round-arm bowling was legalized by MCC: ‘The ball must be bowled. If it is thrown or jerked or if the hand be above the shoulder in the delivery, the umpire must call ‘No ball’.’ It is, however, ironic to read that William Lillywhite was frequently raising his arm above his shoulder by 1835 and other bowlers copied his lead. One player above all others captured the public’s imagination as an all- rounder, Alfred Mynn. He made his debut in the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord’s in 1832 and judging by the number of wides given it is obvious that he, and presumably G.T.Knight, bowled round-arm. In the following two seasons Mynn built up a great reputation as a hard-hitting batsman and a very fast round-arm bowler – every aspiring cricketer must have wished he could emulate Mynn, so he as much as anyone forced the change in the law noted in the previous paragraph. In fact the whole palaver occurred anew as the round-armers soon began to raise their arms above their shoulders, until the authorities again conceded defeat and over-arm was legalized in 1864, but that is long after Clarke’s death and not a subject to be discussed here. Although Clarke was to become a great innovator in the development of the game, first in Nottingham, then in the rest of the British Isles, yet curiously he remained wedded to a bowling style which was on its way out when he was still a youth. It’s a conundrum. Spin bowling, whether