Lives in Cricket No 39 - Alec Watson

70 Chapter Seven Chucker? During Watson’s playing career the Laws of Cricket were admirably succinct: three to four pages in Wisden instead of the present 48. Indeed the law on ‘throwing’ was a one-liner throughout his career. Law X read: ‘The ball must be bowled; if thrown or jerked the umpire shall call “No ball”.’ Unfortunately the Law did not define ‘bowled’, nor indeed a ‘throw’ or ‘jerk’, so the umpire was left to his own judgement as to what constituted one of these infringements. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines a ‘throw’ as (inter alia): ‘a forceful propulsion or delivery from or as from the hand or arm’. The same source defines a ‘jerk’ as ‘a quick suddenly arrested movement; a sharp sudden pull, throw, push, thrust or twist’. It would seem then that the Law was directed against a sharp, forceful, or sudden delivery of the ball. In practice that seems to have meant the bending and straightening of the elbow in the course of the delivery. The modern version of the law specifically allows movement of the wrist, but the older version is not clear on that. While one skilled in the law or the use of words would have a field day in arguing about such a definition and its interpretation, such would seem to have been the Victorian interpretation of the law: a delivery which involved a bending and/or straightening of the bowling arm was a throw. So did Watson infringe that interpretation? His obituarist, John Thompson, wrote that in 1868 Watson was a ‘fast sling bowler’. Over-arm bowling had not yet really come into vogue in Scotland, and it is doubtful whether Watson’s arm was ever much above shoulder level during his delivery. While the OED defines ‘sling’ as to ‘throw, cast or hurl’, the ‘sling’ with Watson was simply just a convenient way of describing his fast round-arm action. As far as can be ascertained, no doubts were expressed about the legitimacy of that action. Even so, slinging suggests a propensity to sudden movement, and this apparent jerkiness may have been at the root of the problem. However, in 1868, as noted earlier, Watson came into contact with David Buchanan, and it may be at that point that the controversy about his bowling action had its origin.