Page:Cricket, by WG Grace.djvu/47

 the greater the chance of success. Mynn, Lillywhite, Hillyer, Wisden and he, ranging from fast round to slow underhand, were variety enough for all purposes, and there can be little doubt that their opponents were in many cases paralysed by it. It was an amusing sight in those days to watch the procession of local players to and from the wicket, dismissed by fast roundhand at one end and insinuating slow underhand at the other. I cannot think of a time when the All-England Eleven, during the first twenty years of its existence, did not possess slow and fast bowling, and in that lay half its strength against weak twenty-two's who had only been accustomed to one extreme or the other. Clarke's personal success was the astonishing part to his opponents. They could understand being bowled by a fast ball of indifferent length, which they but dimly saw after it pitched; but to be clean-bowled by slow underhand was a mystery to them. They forgot the head that was behind Clarke's bowling. Just as F. W. Lillywhite was the first to prove the power of a goodlength medium pace, round-arm ball, so was Clarke the pioneer of good-length slow underhand. Both had thoughtful heads on their shoulders, could tell very quickly what a batsman could play and what he could not, and when they found a weak point bowled at it until they got their man out. I question very much if we have had a slow underhand bowler of the quality of Clarke since. His pitch was so accurate that when he made up his mind to bowl at a particular spot, he could bowl within two inches of it as long as he desired.

Clarke's Eleven visited something like forty different districts the first three years of its existence, and many other fresh places were visited in later years. It is difficult to get at a trustworthy statement of the bowling averages, but in 1850 Clarke bowled in thirty matches and captured 303 wickets.