FAMOUS FAST BOWLER.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 132, 5 June 1926, Page 9

FAMOUS FAST BOWLER.

DEATH OH F. R. SPOFFORTH.

CRICKET FIELD DEMON.

GREAT TEST RECORD. (By -Cable.—Press Association. —Copyright.) LONDON, June 4. The death has occurred of Mr. Frederick Robert Spofforth, the famous Australian demon bowler.— (Reuter.) Of all fast bowlers, who have played for Australia none had such terrors for batsmen as F. R. Spofforth, who was known as the "demon bowler." He was a tall man with long arms, and was able to make the ball fly, so that he appealed a deal more to the imagination of batsmen than any other of this or any other day. Australia has since had its Jones, Eady, Hazlett, Cotter and Jack Gregory, but none of these possessed the terrors for the batsman of his day that Spofforth commanded. - Born at Balmain in 1854, Spofforth was in his 73rd year at the time of his death. He was 24 years of age when he visited England with the first Australian team in 1878, and his record that tour was 107 wickets at an average of 11.7 runs. His last test match was played at Sydney in 1887, and in test matches he took 94 wickets at a cost of 18.57 runs apiece. In a test at Melbourne in 1879 he did "the hat trick," at the Oval in 1882 he took 14 wickets in the match. It was not speed alone that made Spofforth the terror of the batsmen from 1878 to 1882. On this subject an English writer who has studied cricketers states that he bowled fast, but his chief characteristic was "a marvellous change of length and speed." Another writer says he was master of breakback, yorker, top spin and "hanging" spin. He would deliver from various points of the bowling crease, and so^obtain different lines of.flight in.to the batsman.

"But we can no more account for the prowess of Spofiorth wholly in terms of technique," he adds, "than we call account tor any man's -genius in terms of technique. There is no doubting 'that Spofforth did 'get on. batsmen's nerves.' He had a dark Mephistophelean aspect; tall, sinuous—the 'spirit of denial , to 'highly strung cricketers. An old play/er once spoke somewhat in these terms of his first taste of Spofforth: 'It was at the Oval. I were in right form and no afeared of him when I goes in to bart. He'd just taken a wicket, but I waikfl into th' middle jaunty like, flicking , my bat, makin' rare fancy cuts thpough th' slips as I went over th , grase. Well, at the Oval you have to pase th , bowler on the way to th' creese, and as I got near Mr. Spofforth he sort of fixed mc. His look went through mc like a red-hot poker. B.ut I walks on past him along th' wicket to th' batting end. About halfway down somethin' made mc turn round and look back at him over my shoulder. And there he was, still fixin' mc with hie eye.' "One can even to-day get a good idea of Spofforth's demoniac air from the portraits in Mr. Baldam's 'Famous Bowlers.' They were taken long after his days in the sun were over, yet there lurks in the pictures of the man a sense of sinister power. The bowling action is Spring-heel-Jackish; the form of him lithe in an inimical way; his face set in hard, predatory lines. He was the Australian of Australians, a stark man that let in with him the coldest blast of antagonism that ever blew over a June field. We shall not look up on hia like again, no doubt."