Page:Jubilee Book of Cricket (Second edition, 1897).djvu/124

102 was kind and keen enough to bowl to him. Miss Willis delivered the ball just about the height of her shoulder, with a motion that gave the ball an extra impetus. Any one who has seen a lady throw will know at once what is meant. In those days underarm bowling was the rule, and Mr Willis found his sister's style very puzzling. Gathering that the difficulty lay in the fact that her delivery was different from the one in vogue among cricketers of the day, he started using it himself and was very successful. He was not always allowed to bowl in the new way, for cricketers and spectators in those days were very conservative. There can be no doubt that the change was for the better. Pace, spin, and "devil" were more easily acquired than by the old method. Batting, too, was probably made more difficult and less mechanical. The game owes much to Miss Willis. It has been suggested that she wore crinolines, and thus was forced into a roundarm delivery. Did they wear crinolines in 1825? It is to be hoped that the innovation was due to happy inspiration and not to constraining fashion. Rare as round-arm is nowadays, it would be most troublesome to those batsmen who are weak on the leg-side and have uncertain strokes towards third-man and the slips. Bowlers of this kind make the ball after pitching swing across the wicket from the leg-side to the off; perhaps, too, they impart a slight leg-twist to it. This cross swing is due to the manner in which the ball is delivered. The arm, almost fully extended, is brought round from behind the bowler in a plane nearly parallel to that of the pitch. The ball is released when the arm is about parallel to the bowling-crease at the height of the bowler's shoulder; so that the hand is, in the case of a right-hand bowler bowling over the wicket, rather on the righthand side of a straight line between the two middle stumps. A ball thus delivered and pitching on the middle stump v/ill, unless off-break be put on, just about miss the off-stump. If the bowler bowls round the wicket—that is to say, from the right instead of, as is more usual, the left side of his wicket—his hand will be considerably further outside the line from wicket to wicket, and the swing across of the ball will be increased proportionately. It is quite possible, bowling thus, to pitch a good-length ball on the leg-stump, or even slightly outside it, which will miss the offstump. Batsmen who are weak on the on-side are very liable to be clean bowled by this ball that comes across from leg with the bowler's arm; or in playing forward they may possibly give catches to mid-on or the bowler. The same ball from a bowler with a higher delivery is very fruitful in catches at slip or at the