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GREAT BOWLERS.; ; :
HOW THEY WOBBY BATSMEN. "
tells the bowler who most stamps his
peculiarities on the mind of the nervous i
1 batsman-espenallv the fast and erratic
bowler. What tyro would not quail for
instance before that terrible Henry the
Aboriginal, the Queensland player, of
whom an Australian once wrote. "All arrests,
and bees, with a will which in the air and
a savage look in the eyes, Henry' banca
I them down'" And it is this dusky bowers
ler's play, ful way to make certain mas
more passes in the air with his stove-pipe
arms if a batsman is daring enough to fit
him for 4 which is a reminder of how
Cuttell. the great Lancashire "all-rounder '
would, if one of his deliveries were treated
with scant respect, treat the offending
batsman to a prolonged stare of pained
surprise > *.
F T Hack starts has bowline run with
a sort of apologetic bow to the batsman,
and J V Saunders starts in the vicinity
of mid on' This fondness of great showings
for making a circuitous path to the wickets
is remarkable, and Lockwood sometimes
took so wide a position as to be no-balled
for encroaching on the return crease John
Gunn was went to commence his run will a
hidden from the view of the batsman be
hind the umpire's back, C J ICortngut, the
great Essex amateur. used to take a strange
ous run of about twenty two yards the
length of the pitch, and finish up about
a yard from the wicket just as Henry tile ,
Aboriginal docks and F R Spofforth, the
"Demon" and the late George Davidson
of Derbyshire, were in the habit of come
menacing from near and off'
I And what enthusiast is there who is not
familiar with George Hirst's quaint home,
I skip, and jump; or Walter Brearley habit,
doubtless disconcerting to timid batsmen,
of taking a side-step as he begins to bowl
and then changing the ball from his legs,
to his right hand; or if J. T. Bosanquet'-!
deliberate, almost casual and always arrest
gular approach to the bowling creases,
whilst maintaining invincible unperturbed-
bility: or the waving, uncontrollable, mop
of hair on Neville TCnox's head, as lia
swoops down in an attitude reminiscent of,
a sportive kangaroo: or the very sedate;
three steps of Wilfred. Rhodes (which once
elicited stentorian series, of "One, two
three'' in unison from an Australian
crowd! before he whips that left hand UD
like 1 glimmer and drives that curious double
twist to his.-, wrist which means so much,
for the expectant batsman?,
A bowler's direct physical peculiarities,
however must be even more impressive, if
not unsettling, when one remembers that
A. E. Knight wrote of the great George
Giffen, the Australian, "The first tania
one played against him the ball seemed to
come out of the back of his neck." Moreover,
G. L. Jessop wrote of "Hughie"
Trumble, with regard to a test match at
Melbourne some years ago "Every time
he shuffled up to the wicket with his camel-
like motion he appeared to grow taller and
taller, until his arm seemed to be in the
topmost branches of those elms." After
that the reader will probably think it time
to be told that John O'Connor, the Australian,
has been said to resemble a clumsy
elephant when bowling; or that Walter
Mead, of Essex, sometimes seemed to produce
the ball out of his body, so closely
did he have; it to himself during his run-
up;" or that C. M. Wells, the Middlesex
amateur, seems by his curious "heaving'
action to be desirous of propelling his',
body down the pitch alone with the balL
Dr. Macdonald, the old Leicestershire
cricketer, once wrote of a true aboriginal
bowler in Australia-the pace is terrific.
Some local cricketers contend that his
hand should be whitewashed. When he
hits the wickets he jumps about 6 ft. in the
air." And, just as Midwinter, in the old
days of four balls to an over, used to murmur
to himself, "Matthew. Mark, Luke,
and John, as he bowled each ball respectively,
so G. E. Palmer, the Australian, invariably
remarked on capturing a wicket,
"There's one less to bat.
However, with some great bowlers it is
after the ball has left the hand that what
may be called peculiarities begin. Hirst
has been accused of swerving from cover
point; Mold, the old Lancastrian, with the
ball by which he bowled Lohmann at the
Oval in 1896, sent the bail 65 yards 6 in.
-a record. Bowlers like Bland, late of
Sussex, and F. R. Foster, of Warwickshire
(who performed the feat recently in Australia),
have cheerfully smashed stumps in
dismissing batsmen; and on his very first
appearance for New South Wales against
Victoria the great Spofforth smashed the
stumps on two occasions and caused three
breakages to B. B. Cooper s bat!'
There have been more serious bowling
freaks F. G. Roberts, the old Glouces-
tershire bowler, sent down a very fast ball
when playing at a country house near
Southampton some years ago, which
kicked because of some inequality in the
ground and cut a piece clean out of the
moustache of the opposing batsman! One
wicketkeeper in a London club match had
a piece taken off the tip of his nose by a
very fast ball', and another was struck in
the mouth by a bail dislodged by the
bowler, one tooth being knocked out and
two others loo'Cned.
There was a more remarkable bowling
mishap during a match between B.
BLvkborrow's team and Kelley Park at
Beckenham in 1889. when Edgecumbe delivered
a bill to Arthur Newell which
jumped up frown the pitch and struck the
batsman's right leg with terrific force. A '
box of matches in his pocket suddenly
blazed, but did no harm except to s<*oBca*J
the shirt and burn the pocket,
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