Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/286

Rh cannot be infallible, and that the only man in the world who can know whether the ball is thrown or bowled is the bowler himself. Nobody could convince me that in Utopia, or any other place where all cricketers were sportsmen, and everybody wholly virtuous, there would be any bowling that was not fair. I mean by this, that in its first stages every ball that is thrown and not bowled has been done so intentionally. It is probable that the conscience and perceptions have become dulled by constant repetition of the offence, but I believe it to be a fact that the bowler, and the bowler alone, is the only man who can really know if a ball is bowled or thrown. So we arrive at this position: the power of "no-balling" cannot be given to the one person who really knows whether a throw has or has not been perpetrated, and it has to be given to the umpires, whose opinion must always be only too fallible.

I have said that it is very doubtful if a fast ball can be delivered with a bent arm except by a throw. I cannot back up this opinion by scientific reasons, but it would seem that the longer the leverage the easier is it to bowl fast;