Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/53

34 the case, as anybody can see who takes a ball and makes the attempt. It requires more practice to bowl the ball where you want it to go if you bowl round-arm than it does if you bowl overhand, and the fact that bowling with the hand over the shoulder was not allowed before 1864 makes it obvious that the old bowling—that is, the round-arm bowling between 1830 and 1860—was more off the wicket than now. As a matter of fact, the straightest bowler in those days was the most killing. As bowling makes the batting, or creates the level that batsmen reach, it may be inferred that as the wickets certainly were not so easy, only the batsmen with real talent could become famous. You may now coach a boy with fair eyes and aptitude for the game and good nerve to such a degree that he becomes a prolific scorer, but this was not possible in the old days. Very seldom indeed in a first-class match did any but a really good bat get 50 runs; and, as I said before, a captain would rejoice if many a man who can now get long scores scraped up 10 in 1860—at any rate on Lord's.

James Grundy, when Jackson bowled at