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Rh fast bowling, very tall, long-limbed, active, wiry, and impossible to tire, Spofforth had scientifically studied the art of bowling to a most unusual degree. The hard, true wickets in Australia had even then begun to exercise a decisive influence on the characteristics of bowling in that country, and unless a bowler could develop quite exceptional powers of deception, spin, and break, he was soon reduced to absolute helplessness. This difference in climate may be said to be the one element which makes a distinction between cricket as played in the Colonies and cricket as played in England, and, while its influence has been decisive in keeping up the standard of Australian bowling to a very high pitch of excellence, it has been at the same time hardly less favourable to the formation of a free and good style of batting, a style far more difficult to acquire when the ground is unreliable and the climate variable.

At that time Spofforth's methods varied considerably from those which he afterwards employed. He was then as a rule a fast, sometimes terrifically fast, bowler, with occasional slow ones, the change of pace being most admirably masked in the delivery. In after years his average pace was rather over medium, with an unusually big break back for that pace, while the very fast or very slow ones were the exception and not the rule. In addition to these types of ball, no man ever bowled a more dangerous fast yorker than Spofforth, and his armoury may well be said to have contained as damaging a collection of weapons as ever taxed the powers of an opposing