Page:Cricket, by WG Grace.djvu/246



HE majority of cricket writers whose opinions are worth reading are agreed that a first-class bowler is born, not made, and my experience of cricket has confirmed the truth of it. I have met but few bowlers in the first flight who did not possess the natural gift of making the ball come more quickly off the pitch than one would expect; but not one can tell how he does this. Mr. M. Kempson, whose bowling helped the Gentlemen to beat the Players in 1853, is of opinion that the secret of bowling is incommunicable, but a gift improvable by practice to any degree of perfection. I am not going to cry down perseverance and energy, for I owe too much to them; but I repeat, a first-class bowler must have the inestimable something which enables him to begin bowling as naturally as a duck takes to water. Afterwards it depends entirely on himself whether he is to make a great name or not. There is only one way of doing that, and it is by sheer hard work with muscle and brain.

Physical strength alone will not do on the perfect wickets we have nowadays: it must be accompanied with a good head. How often have we heard it said of this and the other bowler that he has not come up to the promise of his youth, although he has been a most diligent and exemplary worker! We have no need to go far for an explanation: it all lies in the not