Page:Jubilee Book of Cricket (Second edition, 1897).djvu/89

Rh wider still. Or if he be a fast bowler, he may put in first a ball pitching on a spot 7 yards from the striker's wicket, but outside the wicket on the off, and then one at 5 or 5½ yards either in the same line or upon the wicket. The power of thus varying his pitch with dexterity is well worth cultivating.

Next we come to a more subtle point. Before a bowler is fully equipped, he must have learnt the art of changing his pace. Thanks to the excellence of present-day wickets, sheer pace and even mechanical accuracy are often futile. Hence the power of deceiving the batsman in the pace of the ball contributes towards success. Suppose our bowler belongs to the "medium" class, how ought he to proceed to vary his pace?

A medium-pace bowler, as he has two directions in which to vary, can make more changes in his deliveries than either the fast or the slow; at least, in my short experience I have found this to be the case. Change of pace means bowling occasionally either slower or faster than the pace usually employed. The methods and objects of this device will be treated more fully later on. Here it is sufficient to remark that the bowler, in putting the theory into practice in actual games, will have to depend upon his own discretion and be guided by the result of his own observations.

Finally, there is the "break" to be mastered—that is to say, the bowler must learn to manipulate and deliver the ball in such a way that, after pitching, it deviates from its original line of flight. It may break either from right to left or vice versa. Very few bowlers can command both breaks. Those who can are very useful to a side. When the ball deviates from right to left, it is said to break from leg; when from left to right, to break from the off. Both breaks are produced by the manner in which the ball is held and caused to spin by finger-and-wrist work at the moment of delivery. It is customary, in speaking of "break," to regard all batsmen and all bowlers as right-handed. From a left-hand batsman's point of view what is called off-break is really leg-break. Further, when a left-hand bowler puts on off-break—that is, causes the ball to deviate from his left to his right after pitching—he uses the same sort of finger-work as the right-hand bowler does in putting on leg-break.

For the sake of clearness the various elements of good bowling have been enumerated one by one. But of course, in practising, a bowler may keep all of them in mind at once when he delivers the ball. He must remember that in a match the best ball he can bowl is, perhaps, one that combines good length, break, and