Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/49

30 the remark that is made in 1900, that any fool can get runs now and any fool could have got wickets between 1830 and 1860, and the state of the grounds is the reason and the cause of this. Old Lillywhite, Redgate, Hillyer, Mynn, William Clarke, Jackson, and many others, were grand bowlers, fit to be compared with the best of any time and country, but the plodding, medium-pace, straight round-arm bowler, who kept a fair length and hammered away at the wicket, met with his reward and success in those days between 1830 and 1860, which he certainly does not meet with now, I saw Gentlemen v. Players both at Lord's and the Oval in 1866. Though there was great variety of bowlers, there was little variety in the bowling of any one bowler, who would be content with what I should call pounding away. Speaking of thirty years ago, the bowler who perhaps more than any other was famous for general accuracy and good length was Jemmy Grundy of Nottingham. Grundy never bowled for catches; he was strictly round-arm, and was far more successful on Lord's—which then was a ground favouring the bowlers,