Bowling- Art Of Getting Wickets In Shortest Possible Time

Southland Times, Issue 24027, 18 January 1940, Page 5

Bowling- Art Of Getting Wickets In Shortest Possible Time

By

NOT OUT

Once again on Saturday the elements took control, and cricketers had to seek other means of diversion. Current matches in senior and junior A grades now become one-day fixtures. I have recently reread a book written by E. H. D. Sewell who was well known in England as a player and who is one of the best critics and coaches the game has known. He has some interesting things to say about modern bowling. “Bowlers toil so much because they do not spin. What is bowling?” he asks. “It is the art of getting wickets in the quickest possible time. The shorter the time it takes to get wickets the fewer runs are scored. Set your field (1) according to the batsman; (2) according to the state of the wicket; (3) according to the state of the score; and bowl accordingly. “Bowling does not consist of delivering eight balls an over and retiring to second slip for a quiet sleep. Bowling requires, if anything, more thought than batting. Remember, always, it is the bowler who calls the tune and who, therefore, orders the play. A batsman cannot score quickly or slowly or hit fours, without the bowler’s direct help. Here and there a batsman hits a few fours in spite of the bowler, but more than two thirds of the scoring is due to bad bowling or to avoidable errors in bowling. Bowl differently to each successive batsman since scarcely any two men bat alike. FAST BOWLING “The first three things a fast bowler should study are: (1) A sensibly long run at a good speed; (2) good length; (3) a good yorker. Those who do not take a long run have only arm and body swing to rely upon and none of them are really fast. There is twice the ‘fire’ and ‘devil’ in the bowling of a fast bowler who takes a long run than there can possibly be in that of a short-run bowler trying to overcome the lack of a long run by exaggerated (and consequently unnecessarily tiring) body and arm contortions. “Having carefully studied the comfortable length of run best suited to himself, the bowler must practise in-

cessantly at pitching a straight length. The best ball of the fast bowler pitches on ox’ very neax’ the line of the off stump.

“Having mastered this ball, the next item is that very deadly ball, the fast yorker. This ball has won many a match and will do so again. The way to bowl it is to concentrate upoxx bowling at the bails. Aim at them and the ball will pitch just on ox- over the popping crease. This is where the true yorkex- pitches. The fast yorker has been, since the beginning of cricket, the best ball of all to bowl to a new batsman.

“Having studied good length, direction on the off stump and the yorker, and bowled little else for some years, it is time to learn how to pitch the off break without loss of pace or direction. It can be acquired only by incessant practice. The grip for the off break must be used and, if the bowler makes full use of the length of the bowling crease and brings his right foot down as near the return crease as he can he also bowls with a true edgewise delivery—this is most important—he will find that a ball pitching outside the off stump at a good length will go on and hit the leg stump whether the ball has turned from the off or not on pitching. The angle of delivery matters a great deal. It is a very good policy to alter the place of despatch during every over. “Bowl one ball from as near the stumps as possible; the next from as near the return crease as possible; the third half way between the two; the fourth from a yard short of the bowling crease and a little slower; the fifth from the return crease; the sixth a fast yorker; the seventh from where the third was bowled and the eighth from where the first was bowled. That is a good mixed over.” Mr Sewell has a new and very sound idea as to the placing of the slips for

fast bowling. He suggests taking third slip away, moving the remaining two slips a yard wider and adding third slip to the gully—making two men in the gully, where he maintains, many more chances go than to third slip. This is an idea which could well be tried by local fast bowlers. To return to fast bowling, Mr Sewell says: “Final hints to a fast bowler are as follows: Avoid the weak modern practice of ‘bumping ’em down’ and trusting to snicks being held anywhere behind the wicket. That is not bowling, but a waste of time. The thing to do is to bowl the batsman out, and let the snicks come when they may. Slight, very slight, changes of pace; yorkers; changes in point of despatch thus varying the angle of delivery; an occasional full pitch at the top of the stumps, bowled on purpose; and ceaseless tireless energy, are the chief weapons of a true fast bowler’s armoury. MEDIUM AND SLOW BOWLING “The rules for one kind of bowling, whether right hand or left hand, are, in the main, the -same for all kinds. But there are certain differences which must be observed. For one thing, whereas slow and medium-paced bowlers should depend a good deal upon what is known as flighting the ball for success, a fast bowler cannot have a similar dependency because he is such a speedy affair that there is practically no such thing in his case as ‘beating his man in the air,’ which is what happens when a slow bowler so deceives a batsman in the flight of the ball as to cause him to make up his mind finally—and wrongly—while the ball is in the air. All the other rules about change of pace, alteration of angle, as well as distance of the delivery, yorker bowling, and so on, hold good for all bowling. “The slower paced bowlers have one more field in which to slay their victims than has the fast bowler, and that is the outfield. It is one of the cleverest things a slow bowler can do to entice a batsman into mis-hitting a ball well within reach of a wiselyplaced long field, and one of the best ways of doing this is to flight the ball so that the resultant hit must be a false one.

“Flighting is done largely, if not entirely, by changes of pace, and in this branch of bowling the half-ball grip is invaluable. Briefly put, the object of flighting the ball is to make the batsman mistake the length, or pitch, of the ball. This is best achieved by slightly tossing it at the bowler’s end or at the start of its flight. The obvious result of this, if it is successfully done, is to cause the batsman to imagine the ball is pitching closer to him than it really is. He is consequently apt to mistake a good length for a half volley and to make up his mind to hit where he ought to play defensively. Such balls well-bowled are very productive of ‘stumped’ and ‘c and b’ chances. Flighting is very difficult of accomplishment, but once a young cricketer has mastered length and command of the ball, there is no reason why he should not study it and every reason why he should. THE GOOGLY “The googly is either an off break delivered with a leg-break action, or a leg break delivered with an off-break action, as a left handed bowler would deliver it. Each bowler must discover for himself which way best suits him for bowling a googly. There is no one grip for this ball. “Any youngster can learn to bowl the googly if he has any aptitude for slow bowling with spin from leg. It is not so easy for off-break bowlers pure and simple. The chief drawback of googly bowling is that it means so many gaps in the set of a field that a class batsman has only to refuse to be tempted to score off the good balls to be sure of runs off the bad ones. This solution was arrived at at once in 1907 when England was first invaded by such a set of googly bowlers as it had never beheld before and has j not seen since—the South Africans. 1 The best brain that ever played first! class cricket regularly—that of C. B. ■ Fry—solved the puzzle straight away. Except Hobbs, who is the best player of googlies yet seen, nobody played them so successfully as Fry. He did it by stopping or ignoring, everything doubtful, and going for singles and twos only off the other ones, unless, of course, it was a really bad length one, when it received the clout proper. “All of which is, of course, very good advice and boils down to the fact that bowlers, to be successful, must work, and work hard. It is no practice for a bowler to plug away at mediocre batsmen in the nets. The thing to do is to get on a wicket away from the nets, preferably one ' marked out with white lines to show the most vital target of all—the good length area, and where off breaks and . leg breaks must pitch to be deadly. I “That very great bowler, the late I A. E. Trott (Australia and Middlesex) | learned to bowl the true off break, the • one that gets wickets, by putting up; a box in front of the stumps and, pitching the ball to miss the box but hit the stumps. The young bowler may never have tried this road to perfection.