Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/46

Rh After this year (1827) the old-fashioned fast underhand bowling went out of fashion, and even lob bowling went to the wall. The superiority of round-arm bowling became so manifest that bowlers went into the opposite extreme, and it was not until the famous William Clarke bowled his lobs with astonishing success against all classes of batsmen that lob bowling came in at all. In this respect cricketers were like other people who desire to have and practise some new thing, and when they get it ignore utterly the old practice and the old science.

In these days we keep men at high salaries who have brought wickets to a perfection of smoothness which our forefathers never dreamt of. Last century the old Hambledon Club played for many years on Windmill Down, which sloped down hill on all sides from the centre, and this Nyren admired, as it sharpened up the fielding; the bowlers too selected the wickets, and we read that it was part of the craft of a bowler that he should be able to select the wicket which should suit his own bowling. Nyren quotes as an instance of David Harris's genius, "that he not only could choose a wicket to suit his bowling but