Page:Cricket (Steel, Lyttelton).djvu/194

172 The best bit of bowling the writer ever recollects playing against was in the second innings of the Gentlemen of England v. Australians, at Lord's in 1884. It was Giffen's day, and a batsman had to have luck on his side if he succeeded in staying in long enough to appreciate the beauty of the bowling. Take Peate and Emmett, the two Yorkshire left-handers, both in their day the best bowlers in England—in fact, the latter delighted his many admirers and friends by topping the list of English bowlers in the season of 1886, a most creditable performance for a man no longer in the first blush of youth. Both these men stand sideways to the batsman when they deliver the ball, and both are most difficult to see. Palmer, the Australian, bowled very nearly quite square; his bowling was very easy to see and to judge, and the more credit is therefore due to him for being such a successful bowler. There is no doubt a greater difficulty in attaining to perfect length and command over the ball when the body of the bowler is not square at the moment of delivery; but if these essentials to good bowling are obtained by patience and constant practice, the bowler has this great advantage that his balls are more difficult for the batsman to judge accurately. It seems strange that not one of the numerous published books on cricket has ever suggested the advantage to the bowler which is obtained in this way. In almost every one of these works great stress is laid upon the necessity of the bowler presenting a full face to the opposite wicket at the moment the ball leaves the hand. It is doubtless easier for a beginner to bowl straight if he adopts this style of bowling; but if he can once gain straightness by the other, viz. the sideways style, he has enlisted a great help to success.

W. G. Grace is, however, an exception to this rule. He delivers the ball perfectly square with the batsman; and yet we suppose that to a batsman who meets him for the first time, his bowling is about as difficult to see and to judge as that of any bowler ever was. It is a fact that his bowling is invariably fatal to men he has not met before. This is owing to the