Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

77 There is a most interesting diagram in Pycroft’s The Cricket Field comparing Clarke’s bowling with Wisden’s. Pycroft then starts his following chapter, entitled ‘Bowling – An Hour with “Old Clarke”’, spelling out Clarke’s skills as bowler and tactician, with the following comments: In cricket wisdom Clarke is truly ‘Old’: what he has learnt from anybody, he learnt from Lambert. But he is a man who thinks for himself, and knows men and manners. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he one day said to a gentleman taking guard, ‘but ain’t you Harrow?’ ‘Then we shan’t want a man down there.’ He said, addressing a fieldman; ‘stand for the “Harrow drive”, between point and middle wicket.’ The time to see Clarke is the morning of a match. While others are practising, he walks round with his hands under the flaps of his coat, reconnoitering his adversaries’ wicket. ‘Before you bowl to a man, it is worth something to know what is running in his head. That gentleman’, he will say, ‘is too fast on his feet, so, as good as ready money to me: if he doesn’t hit he can’t score; if he does I shall have him.’ Going a little further, he sees a man lobbing to another, who is practising stepping in. ‘There, sir, is “practising to play Clarke”, that Incredible Success of the All-England Eleven The circus comes to town. Handbill for All-England match against a Dorset XVIII played just outside Bridport in August 1850. AEE had played a XXII at Hereford a couple of days before, and moved on to Southampton straight after this game.