OF CRICKET

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23109, 6 August 1938, Page 16 (Supplement)

OF CRICKET

day ceased to be an exclusively English game. The hero of the hour, of course, was Spofforth. Across the tranquil background of English cricket in tho late 'seventies Spofforth shot like a flash of forked lightning from out a serene sky. " The Blue Streak " of cricket was what M. A. Noble, cleverest ol Australian captains, called him. English cricketers nicknamed him " The Demon," as afterwards tlioy dubbed C. T. B. Turner " Tho Terror," and J. J. Ferris "The Fiend." His deeds in 1878 and the next few years were tho wonder of tho cricket world. Problems for "W.G." Spofforth did for bowling what W. G. Grace did for batsmansliip; and I think a good deal might be said for the claim that because bowling has always in the nature of things been a more seminal factor in cricket's technical evolution than batting, he did more to change the course of the game as a whole than "W.G." did. Ho set tho champion himself new problems to solve. Tall, spare, wire-limbed, ho bowled with the very perfection of rhythmical action as though his arms and legs were framed on steel springs. There was in truth something of a demoniac air about him. He had a way of looking at batsmen as they walked past him to the crease which, it is honestly recorded, made them feel acutely uncomfortable. . He had no use for tho "defensive bowling of tho present age, bowling merelv to keep runs down or to gain time.'" Above all things," ho wrote in his advice to voung bowlers, "you must attack. Always bo on tho offensive." , , . . . Genius though he was, ho believed in practice. " Without any ball in mv hand." he declared toward tho end of his playing career, " 1 bowl at least a dozen balls a day, with all tho power I have, at some imaginary f crack batsman in a room or passage." Spofforth at first was a verv fast bowler, self-modelled on tho English fast bowler, Tarrant. But when, also in Australia, he had seen Alfred Shaw and Southerton, two of the greatest of medium-pace length bowlers, be decided to modify his speed and try to combine the qualities of all three, bp to that time bowlers had been individually fast medium or slow. Nobody had visualised the possibilities latent in the bowling of a man who might be all three m one.

Vital Things That is what Spofforth made himself. He could bowl any kind of ball, except the " googly" which didl not come into cricket until after Spofforth had gone out of it. And it is noteworthy that he abandoned that most overworked and emasculated ball of to-day.

tlio "swinger," because bowling it lessoned his control of length. He learned, and taught, that the vital things in bowling wore variation of pace and flight, and the power to conceal them, the subservience of spin to length, and the careful co-ordiuation of all, each aiding the other, in a planned attack. Preaching his gospel of "disguise in action, surprise, in effect," he kept his fastest ball "up his sleovo " for occasional and therefore more deadly employment. Perhaps his greatest assot was his astonishing ability to exploit his variations without advertising his intentions to the batsman. Karo and clover was the batsman who knew what kind of ball Spofforth was bowling to hi in until it was almost ready to dart its venom just in front of his bat. Organised Attack Apart from the example which he sot by his own bowling as such, Spofforth did one more vital thing for cricket; he put a new meaning into the word "tactics." That match on May 27, 1878, was more than a cricket match: it was a dramatic confrontation ot the phlegmatic English and the realist Australian ideas of the game. It provided a convincing demonstration of the value of a typo of organised attack destined to influence the' future of cricket possibly more than any other single factor in the transition from round-arm to over-arm bowling. Spofforth did not set an orthodox field and then bowl to it. He used the fieldsmen as integral parts of his bowling plan. Mid-on ana square-leg with him ceased to be fixed positions in the field. Scorning tlio then fashionable offtheory, he aimed always to hit the wickets; and when ho bowled at the middle and leg stumps he brought Boyle (next to himself the safest fieldsman on the side) well forward, much closer to tlio bat than had been the custom. " Silly Mid-on " The late Lord Harris was the first, I believe, to call the position "silly midon"; and that was the origin of the group of "silly" fielding-places, common enough since Spofforth's time, which have earned for the players courageous enough to occupy them the soubriquet of " suicide squad." And there, also to all intents and purposes, was the origin o$ legitimate leg-theory bowling and the leg-trap of yesterday and to-day. Of cricket's real old masters none, showed more of character knit with purpose than The Demon. " Take him for all in all," as Mitford said of Silver Billy Beklham, "we ne'er shall look upon his like again." What would England not give for bowling as good as his to pit against the challenge of his fellow-countrymen this year?