Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

21 over-arm or under-arm, demands exceptional skill and guile, often allied to years of practice, if a player is going to be effective at the highest level. According to some contemporary comments Clarke’s bowling was not his main asset until he was in his thirties. Undoubtedly he had great ability purely through the way he could vary the pace of his delivery without a noticeable change of action: linked to this was his accuracy of length and direction. Clarke’s success was however also attributed to his careful study of the batting ability of his opponents. A number of players have commented on Clarke’s habit of walking round the ground before the start of play and watching the home batsmen practising. One of the many examples will serve to illustrate this. The All-England Eleven were playing St Helens in a match in early May 1853. Joseph McCormick, then 18, was in the local side; he would captain Cambridge University three years later. He told A.W.Pullin of his first encounter with Clarke: I was practising when Clarke came walking round the ground with the ball in his hand. After watching me for a little while, he said, ‘May I bowl you a ball or two?’ Of course I was delighted at the favour. But, alas! I did not know his object was to demonstrate my own weakness. What happened? Old Clarke had evidently noticed that I was no slogger, but hit hard and low. The first ball he pitched to me well up, and I drove it for two. He then brought in George Anderson to twenty yards behind him, and bowled a similar ball and I hit it hard and straight into the Yorkshireman’s hand. That was about as neat a bit of generalship on Clarke’s part as any tactician could have exhibited. Old Clarke was not a bona fide lob bowler, for he could and did bowl fastish at times. He was more like Money than Drake. His two great characteristics were his judgment and his accuracy of pitch. W.B.Money (Kent, Cambridge University, Surrey) is described by Haygarth as bowling slow twisting under-arm lobs; E.T.Drake (Cambridge University) is described as bowling under-arm lobs, twisting from the leg to the off – clearly there was a subtle difference between the two that Haygarth did not note. Comment on Clarke’s skills brings me to the unique book by Felix (Nicholas Wanostrocht) entitled How to Play Clarke . I believe I’m on safe ground in stating this book to be the only time that one of the principal batsmen of the day has devoted a written work trying to explain the best method of combating an outstanding bowling contemporary. Also, by contrast with today’s output of cricket books, we can rest assured that Felix actually wrote every word in his book himself! There is no room to reproduce the full work here but Felix describes Clarke’s bowling method thus: It is neither underhand, not overhand, nor round arm; nor always slow, nor ever fast; nor does it always screw from the leg to the off, but often breaks back in a contrary direction. It is varied in pitch and in pace, as much to assail the temper of the batsman, as it is meant to attack the wicket. It is, indeed, a combination of intricacies; and no man who has had the great good fortune to have made a score from him is to boast that he can play him as he likes, and where he likes. I have seen a score Clarke as a Bowler