INVENTOR OF GOOGLY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 243, 13 October 1936, Page 7

INVENTOR OF GOOGLY.

PASSING OF BOSANQUET

(Received 10 a.m.) LONDON, October 12. The death has occurred of B. J. T. Bosanquet, the Middlesex and England cricketer, who invented googly bowling. B. J. T. Bosanquet was born on October 13, 1877, so that he would have been 59 years of age to-day. He played for Eton, Oxford University and Middlesex. Though the googly had been bowled inadvertently before, by Walter Mead (Essex), besides others, it was Bosanquet who first mastered both its theory arid practice. Originally a fastish medium bowler, he found that entile highly artificial wickets at the beginning' of the century there was little encouragement or prospect of success, and before he left Oxford in 1900 he had begun experimenting with leg-breaks and his new discovery of the "leg-break reversed." This he had evolved in the playing of "twisty grab," that game played over a table in the pavilion by rain-bound cricketers to beguile time, and finally, in 1901, ventured to bowl it in matchcs. In the 1902-03 season lie came to New Zealand with Lord Hawke's team. Against Auckland at Christmas Bosanquet took two wickets for 31 and four for 44. Lord Hawke's eleven won by an innings and 129 runs. In the first Test, which England won at Christchurch by seven wickets, he got four for 44 in the second knock, while in the final Test at Wellington, where the visitors won by an innings and .22 runs, Bosanquet took only one wicket for 66 in the match. /As a batsman he was an original with hie very short back-lfft stroke. His style was-rough and unattractive, but few men could drive or hook harder, thanks to the great strength of his forearms and wrists. In general appearance he resembled Warwick Armstrong, the Australian Test captain. On the way home from New Zealand Hawke's eleven played the Australian States, and, turning out against New South Wales, Bosanquet clean bowled Victor Trumper with a googly, the first ball he delivered in Australia. After a highly successful English season in 1903 he went out with P. F. Warner's side to Australia, where his bowling (six for 51 in the second innings) clearly won ; the fourth Test, and with it the "rubber." j In 1904 lie was the best all-round j amateur in England, but after one most j sensational performance in the first Test of 1905 at Trent Bridge (eight for 107 in the second innings), enabling England to i win (Trumper absent hurt in both innings), he practically dropped out ofj cricket.