Page:Jubilee Book of Cricket (Second edition, 1897).djvu/125

Rh wicket: bowled by a round-arm bowler, the ball keeps rather too low for this, as, if snicked, it continues to keep very low unless the batsman holds his bat so crooked that the outer edge gives it a lift upwards. In order to get such catches, however, the ball should be pitched on or just outside the off-stump. Most roundarm bowlers are fast or fast-medium. Apart from the swing across, the style has not much to recommend it. The fact that it causes the ball to keep low, though detrimental to the mowing style of batsman, allows a good player to meet it confidently with a hard forward-stroke. Balls that keep low are easy to drive along the ground.

Over-arm bowling—fast, medium, and slow—is the kind most generally adopted now. Almost certainly it is the best. The bowler who has the higher action, if he has the other requirements of good bowling, attains the better results. As to pace, relatively fast bowlers are, as a rule, most successful upon fast fiery wickets; slow and medium upon sticky or crumbling wickets. The general practice of right-hand over-arm bowlers is to bowl at the off-stump or just outside it with an off-break, varied occasionally by a ball that gives with the arm. He who can follow this plan, change his pace and pitch as circumstances require, and supplement everything with a liberal use of his wits, should not fail to meet with success. A bowler with a high action must be very careful not to bowl too much to leg, as his balls have, to begin with, a tendency to break across the wicket from the off-side. Most of what has already been said in treating of bowling in general applies to the method that had better be followed by over-arm bowlers; for this kind being most common, naturally suggests the line taken in dealing with the subject of bowling. I^ittle can be added to the advice previously given with reference to slow and medium-pace bowling. Right-hand over-arm medium-pace, indeed, is the type of all bowling, and is usually in a cricketer's mind when talking of bowling in the abstract.

The side that possesses the greatest variety of bowling will, other things being equal, come out with the best results at the end of a season. Certainly no side is complete without a good fast bowler. He is particularly useful in several ways. Batsmen on first coming in, and as yet unaccustomed to the Hght and the pace of the wicket, are more likely to mistime his than slow or medium-pace balls, simply because there is less time to watch them and to correct mistakes. Again, it not unfrequently happens that the tail-end of a team, by dint of determination and a little luck, knock slow or medium-pace deliveries, however