Page:Cricket, by WG Grace.djvu/19

 to the end of an innings, and playing his first ball as he would play the last. Tom's appearance on a cricket-field would startle the carefully-dressed player of today. "He was the driest and most rigid-limbed chap I ever knew," says Nyren. "His skin was like the rind of an old oak, and as sapless. I have seen his knuckles knocked handsomely about, from Harris's bowling, but never saw any blood upon his hands. You might just as well attempt to phlebotomise a mummy. He had a wilted, apple-john face; long, spider legs, as thick at the anclesankles [sic] as at the hips, and perfectly straight all the way down." Tom was not satisfied with underhand bowling, and was the first to raise the arm above the level of the elbow; but he got no encouragement from the Hambledon Club, who decided it was throwing, and he had to give it up.

Nyren, while strong in the opinion that the Hambledon Club was head and shoulders above every other, was not blind to the merits of his opponents. He is great in praise of Lumpy—Stevens was his real name—a Surrey man. Lumpy could bowl the greatest number of length-balls in succession of any bowler he knew. He had a great reputation as a single-wicket player; but was completely and unexpectedly sat upon on a certain occasion. The match in which he was playing having been concluded early in the day, "a long, raw-boned devil of a countryman came up, and offered to play any of the twenty-two at single-wicket for five pounds. Lumpy was persuaded to accept the challenge, but would not stake more than a pound; the rest was subscribed. The confident old bowler made the countryman go in first, for he thought to settle his business in a twink; but the fellow having an arm as long as a hop-pole, reached in at Lumpy's balls, bowl what length he might, slashed and thrashed away in the most ludicrous style, hitting his balls all over the field,