Although social conditions inhibited the growth of cricket during the early years of the nineteenth century, it was poised to grow from its rural cradle into an international obsession. The old patrons Winchilsea and Mann, and lesser-known benefactors such as Lords Yarmouth and Darnley, bowed out of cricket history. Lord Frederick Beauclerk, who first appeared in the 1790s, would be a key figure in the future. So too would William Ward and James Dark, whose futures would be interwoven with that of Lord’s. Billy Beldham, John Small Junior, Tom Walker, William Fennex, John Wells and Robert Robinson were still playing, and George Osbaldeston, E.H. Budd, Thomas Beagley and William Searle began to come to the fore. John Willes was experimenting with a new form of bowling that would change the laws of cricket. Babies in their cradles, Nicholas Felix, Alfred Mynn and Fuller Pilch, would raise skills to a higher level.
In 1811 the women of Hampshire played the women of Surrey, and Thomas Rowlandson was on hand to draw a famous caricature of the occasion. Beneath an apparently dormant surface, the future of cricket was taking shape. Overseas, cricket was being played in Sydney, Australia. British prisoners of war were enjoying the game in Argentina, and St Anne’s Cricket Club was flourishing in Barbados. The first known century in India was scored by R. Vansittart at Calcutta in 1806, for Old Etonians vs Rest of Calcutta. The game continued to spread. Officers of the Artillery Mess were playing in Cape Town in 1808, while in the United States Boston boasted its own cricket club. Games were soon being played at Green Point Common in Cape Town – still in use today – and in Naples, where a local club attracted French and Neapolitan members. In the next decade, officers of the Brigade of Guards played near Brussels, watched by the Duke of Wellington, before facing Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Cricket can be traced to Tasmania, Valparaiso (Chile), Ontario, South Carolina and Gibraltar. Much of the spread mirrored the campaigns of the British Army and navy, but when the forces departed, cricket often stayed on.
The first book on cricket technique, Thomas Boxall’s Rules and Instructions for Playing at the Game of Cricket, was published in 1801, and Samuel Britcher’s books of scores – effectively early Wisdens – had been in circulation since 1790. A book with a section on cricket, translated from German, was published in Denmark as early as 1801. The game was strong in the public schools, with Eton, Harrow and Westminster contesting matches at Lord’s. It is likely that Eton and Harrow had been playing an annual fixture at Lord’s since the turn of the century, although 1805 is the first game for which scores are known. The poet Lord Byron, despite his lame foot, scored 7 and 2 for Harrow, although he later boasted of rather larger scores to his old friend Charles Gordon. It may be that his memory was befuddled, for as he freely admitted, the teams became drunk after the match and ended up at the Haymarket Theatre where, being young gentlemen out on a spree, they kicked up a fuss and made themselves thoroughly unwelcome.
While they did so, the army and navy engaged in a more deadly battle with France, and the government wrestled with domestic turbulence. New inventions cost jobs, and unrest among the workforce led to violence. In 1811 factory machines were destroyed in riots at Nottingham and the government, fearful of revolution, acted to make destruction of property a new capital offence. Harshness stood in for enlightened policy.
Other changes were more benevolent. Vast improvements in medicine and nursing were under way: bacteria were isolated, immunisation cut disease, and anaesthetics came into use. Other benevolent changes would improve the lifestyles of the mass of the population. Leisure time increased. The rise of the symphony orchestra began. New instruments, such as the woodwinds so beloved of Mozart, were added to orchestras. In 1808 Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony added yet more instruments: trombones, piccolos and contra-bassoons swelled the orchestra, and as the century advanced cornets, tubas and additional percussion became more commonplace. It was all a far cry from the joyful singing at the Bat and Ball to the solitary fiddle of old John Small.
War and social conditions slowed the advance of cricket, but it was not about to wither. An ‘England’ team played thirty-five games in the first seven years of the century, although the range of opponents was limited, and most of their fixtures were against Surrey, Kent, Hampshire or the MCC. The same cricketers, albeit disguised as amateur ‘Gentlemen’ and professional ‘Players’, also began a rivalry at Lord’s in 1806 that would endure for 156 years, until the distinction became obsolete and the fixture was abandoned. On the poor pitches of the time, some games produced miserly scores: Kent were bowled out for only 6 runs against Bexley. In all encounters, underarm bowling held sway. It was soon to be challenged by a more formidable proponent than the old Hambledon rustic Tom Walker.
The birth of round-arm bowling has its own legends. One, widely accepted, is charming, though dubious. John Willes, a handsome, wealthy landowner with property in Kent and Sussex, lived life to the full. He was also an individualist and, it would seem, could be something of an awkward cuss. Much of our knowledge of him comes from the recollections of his nephew Edward Hodges, whose affectionate tales must be treated with the scepticism that is always wise when fond reminiscences masquerade as history. Hodges tells us that Willes was a reckless rider to hounds, a good boxer, a keen shot and an erratic suitor. He once eloped in a coach-and-four with a young lady from Harrietsham – a tale that cries out to be a limerick – but her father pursued them on horseback, pistol in hand, and returned her, unmarried, to the family home. When taxed with this tale by the young Hodges, Willes reacted with a fury that did not lessen when he was told that the story originated from a lady friend. It may have been true, or merely gossip, but it gives a flavour of an eccentric, spontaneous man of high temper, unrestrained by convention.
Willes was a keen cricketer who practised in a barn at Tonford, near Canterbury, with his sister Christiana (not ‘Christina’, as is often thought) and a dog trained to recover the ball. Christiana, Edward Hodges recalled, threw the ball to Willes round-arm, since her voluminous hooped skirts prevented her bowling in the familiar underarm fashion. Although this tale offers a truly delightful picture, and cannot be disproved, nor can it be relied upon, even though Christiana Willes was Hodges’ mother. The winter practice in the barn must have been in the years immediately before Willes bowled round-arm in public, which would fix their date at between 1800 and 1806. Unfortunately for the story, at that time, as any devotee of the screen adaptations of Jane Austen – or of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair – will know, hooped skirts were no longer in vogue.
A variant of the ‘Christiana’ genesis emerges in 1886, in a letter from ‘R.H.W.’, a former cricketer:
I will just send you what Lord Verulam told me about the origin of round-arm bowling. One Knight, a south-country bowler, used to practise with his sister to keep his hand in, and his sister bowled to him in turn. As she put no steam on, he asked her to shy the ball, which she did in the way women usually do shy, that is without using wrist. He observed that the pace improved, and that there was no ‘jerk’, which was rigorously defendu in those days, and he tried the bowling himself, and found he could get great pace, a twist from the leg, and much more rebound. He laid the matter before Lord’s Committee, and the style was at once legalized and adopted. This, Lord Verulam said, was about 1829, and I think we have proved that pretty correct, quite near enough.*
Well, not really. The tale is muddled, and is so similar to the more popular theory that I suspect it is an old man misrecalling a tale from his youth. ‘One Knight, a south-country bowler’ refers to Mr Knight of Alton, who features in the Reverend Pycroft’s early history The Cricket Field (1851). We shall return to him shortly, for he was to have a significant role in revolutionising cricket, and came from an unexpected lineage. In the meantime, Pycroft offers yet another version of how round-arm bowling was introduced:
Just before the establishment of Mr Willes’ round-hand bowling, and as if to prepare the way, Ashby came forward with an unusual bias, but no great pace. Sparkes bowled in the same style; as also did Mathews and Mr. Jenner somewhat later. Still the batsmen were full as powerful as ever, numbering Saunders, Searle, Beagley, Messrs. Ward, Kingscote, Knight. Suffolk became very strong with Pilch, the Messrs Blake, and others of the famous Bury club; while Slater, Lillywhite, King and the Broadbridges raised the name of Midhurst and of Sussex. Against such batsmen every variety of underhand delivery failed to maintain the balance of the game, till Broadbridge and Lillywhite, after many protests and discussions, were so successful in establishing round-arm that it was long called ‘Sussex bowling’.
Whatever the truth of its birth may be, the facts of the introduction of round-arm bowling to cricket are clear. At some point in or before 1806, John Willes began to bowl in the round-arm style in local games in Kent; no doubt his social status, together with his fiery temper, discouraged any opposition to his doing so. But opposition there was, and it would prove to be formidable.
In July 1807 Willes was one of ‘Twenty-three of Kent’ who played against ‘Thirteen of All-England’ at Penenden Heath, near Maidstone. The game, widely trailed as the ‘greatest match’ to be staged in Kent for twenty years, with a purse of a thousand guineas to the winner, was eagerly awaited, and many bets were laid. When Willes bowled, it would become famous. The Morning Herald reported:
The straight arm bowling, introduced by John Willes Esq, was generally practised in the game, and fully proved an obstacle against getting runs in comparison to what might have been got by the straight-forward bowling. This bowling met with great opposition.
The wording of this report – ‘The straight-arm bowling … was generally practised’ – suggests that Willes was not alone in bowling round-arm during the game. Kent won by 162 runs, so it was obviously effective. Nonetheless, the new style must have been startling to the spectators. From the inception of cricket they had been accustomed to underarm bowling. Now they were seeing the bowler’s arm being raised and the ball propelled not from under the arm, but with a slinging, scything action from shoulder height.
We will never know if the players and spectators at Penenden that day were content to embrace the new style of bowling, but it soon became clear that others were emphatically opposed to it. It is easy to understand their hostility. The action of round-arm bowling must have generated much greater pace than batsmen were accustomed to facing. Moreover, it changed the angle of attack, and did so on pitches that were uneven and grassy, and against batsmen without any protective clothing. Critics condemned the new style as unfair and dangerous. It slowed run-scoring (which had in fact never been fast) and tilted the advantage decisively from batsman to bowler. It would have been surprising if it had not aroused great passions.
And yet, after the initial press report on the game at Penenden Heath, there are no contemporary records of what happened next. It seems unlikely that the formidable Mr Willes simply abandoned his new style of bowling. But for years nothing is reported. Writing sixty years later, in 1868, Charles Box suggested in The Theory and Practice of Cricket that Willes was often barred from matches, and that most cricketers were bitterly opposed to round-arm bowling. Whenever Willes played – and his nature was such that it is unlikely he would have been easily dissuaded from doing so – games were said to have been brought to an end by uproar and spectators invading the pitch. However, these are post-hoc recollections made decades later, not contemporary reports.
Superficially, the lack of contemporary reports seems strange, but these were not normal times. In 1805 Napoleon had planned to invade England, observing that the Channel was ‘nothing but a ditch’. If he had done so, Kent was a likely landing ground, and in the circumstances John Willes’s exploits on the cricket field might not have been of primary interest to the press. Of course, the invasion never came. Sadly for Napoleon, the ‘ditch’ was patrolled by the Royal Navy. After years of invasion fears the British Army, aided by the Prussians, finally defeated him at Waterloo in 1815. A generation of peace lay ahead. Everywhere, innovation ushered in a new world. Stephenson built his first locomotive in 1814, the miner’s safety lamp was invented by Humphry Davy, gas lighting was installed in Piccadilly and Dr James Blundell would pioneer the first human blood transfusion at Guy’s Hospital. It was not evident at the time but, post-Waterloo, Britain’s military might and industrial genius would lead her to an empire of unprecedented power.
Britain’s embrace of free trade, technology and flexible labour markets accelerated her transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society. But although these changes laid the foundations for Britain’s hundred-year global domininance, they ignited industrial unrest and fierce campaigns for social and political change. This should not have been surprising. After Waterloo nearly 300,000 soldiers and sailors flooded on to the job market, to find only mass unemployment. Heroes one day, they were hungry the next. Bad harvests and trade depression added fuel to widespread grievances. For many, bread and cheese was the staple diet, and meat was a luxury. The next few years, before the economy took an upturn in the 1820s, brought Britain closer to revolution than at any time in her history. Marches, rallies and secret plots filled the minds of the discontented, and fear of insurrection never left the government. The clamour for parliamentary reform, lower taxes and relief from poverty grew ever louder. Instead, the agitation of country Members of Parliament led in 1815 to a Corn Bill to protect marginal farming, which forced bread prices up, causing huge distress. Once more, it was the poor who suffered. It was a witches’ brew of troubles.
The Corn Laws were just one factor driving the cause of reform. The main political thrust came from credible and well organised labour movements. Pitt’s Combination Act of 1800had been intended to outlaw collective bargaining by both masters and men, but in practice masters could combine and workers could not. Yet the Corn Laws, Poor Laws, agrarian hardship, high taxes and poor factory conditions created a compelling case for labour to unite to negotiate fairer working conditions from employers. In 1818, delegates representing spinners and weavers travelled to London to set up ‘a general union of trades’.
In the midst of such times, we should not be surprised that cricketing disputes were not widely covered in the media. Even so, the mystery remains: did Willes desist from bowling round-arm? We don’t know. But it is certain that round-arm bowling persisted, for at the instigation of Lord Frederick Beauclerk and William Ward, two of the mandarins of cricket, the MCC passed a law to ban it in 1816. Such a ban can only have been necessary if the controversy was still simmering. However, the new Law 10 was poorly drafted, and brought confusion rather than clarity. Umpires were puzzled as to how to interpret it fairly, and as a result round-arm bowling did not disappear altogether. In any event, the MCC could make laws, but had no real power to enforce them.
If, at a distance of two hundred years, it seems odd that the law was not swiftly redrafted in a way that was clear to all, we should recall how difficult it is for the interpretation of any law on bowling actions to be beyond dispute. The dispute over ‘chucking’ in recent years (in the cases, for example, of Tony Lock and Muttiah Muralitharan) has shown us how opinion can be fiercely divided over the legitimacy of bowling actions.
Thus the dispute simmered on. Despite the primacy of the MCC, there was no formal first-class structure, nor meetings of governing bodies. As a result, although frowned on by many, round-arm bowling continued – and prospered – in rural and informal games. Willes and his supporters actively promoted it. Other bowlers adopted it. Umpires approved its use where both sides agreed. The MCC disapproved, but simply looked on. As Willes built up momentum, hoping to face down the traditionalists, conservative opinion-formers waited for the moment to pounce. A crunch was inevitable.
It is likely that the showdown, which took place six years after the passing of Law 10, came about by mutual agreement. Round-arm bowling had never been seen at Lord’s, by far the most important ground, where it would have come under the gaze of the most powerful figures in cricket. This was a class-conscious age: the servants might carouse and misbehave in the servants’ hall, but never in the master’s study. A match at Lord’s was now arranged for 15 July 1822, when round-arm bowling would feature, and be judged.
The game was set up with all the formality of a High Court trial. For the defence, John Willes brought a Kent team in which he and William Ashby would bowl round-arm. For the prosecution, the MCC team took the field with William Ward, Frederick Beauclerk, E.H. Budd and the genial Benjamin Aislabie – the arch-conservatives of cricket, who believed that the new style deformed the game they loved. As judges came two old players, now umpires: Harry Bentley (see pages 286–8) and Noah Mann, son of the old Hambledon rustic who had burned to death in a fireside accident after some jovial drinks. Everyone knew what was at stake, and it would be astonishing if the umpires had not been primed for the impact of their decisions.
The MCC won the toss and elected to bat. As the opening batsmen, Nicholas and Lane, came to the wicket, all the attention was focused on the umpires. Ashby bowled the first over – four balls only – and was not called for a no ball. Noah Mann evidently accepted that his action was legitimate. Round-arm bowling had passed the first part of its crucial test. Willes must therefore have gripped the shiny red ball with high hopes as he prepared for the second over, but these were to be dashed when umpire Bentley called ‘No ball.’
Willes saw that, for all his efforts, he had been lured into a trap: he had done all he could, prepared and plotted meticulously, yet an umpire at Lord’s had declared his action to be illegal. He had lost his gamble. Round-arm bowling had been outlawed at the high court of cricket. Frustrated, angry and racked with disappointment, this passionate man deserted his team, marched from the pitch, mounted his horse and galloped from Lord’s vowing never again to play cricket. However, he did not, in Harry Altham’s compelling phrase, ‘ride away out of Lord’s and out of cricket history’. Far from it. Soon he would take up umpiring, promoting matches and coaching cricketers – not least in fielding, where his team from the tiny Kent village of Sutton Valence where he settled practised until they had ‘blood on their hands’. He would live to see his argument won: within a mere three years he would discover, and coach, one of the great icons of cricket, Alfred Mynn – and Mynn would bowl round-arm.
The traditionalists had won the first skirmish with ease, but the reformers did not accept that the struggle was over. In the counties round-arm bowling had become popular, and the campaign to legalise the action gathered pace. William Lillywhite and James Broad- bridge excelled in the new style, and ensured that Sussex became the team of the decade. In tandem they were a formidable pair: the subtle accuracy of the slow-medium Lillywhite bowling round the wicket, and the faster pace of Broadbridge, tormented batsmen. Lillywhite, a tiny man in tall hat, black bow-tie and broad cotton braces, was recognised as the finest bowler of the era – the ‘Nonpareil’ – and averaged over two hundred wickets a year. The adoption of round- arm bowling by such an eminent player was a significant boost for the reformers, and remained so, for Lillywhite was still bowling in great matches (and his own benefit match) a quarter of a century later. After he left Sussex following a dispute, old enmities over his bowling style were put aside and he joined the playing staff at Lord’s. Later he became the first professional coach at Winchester College. On his death he was buried in Highgate cemetery, where a monument was erected over his grave by ‘the noblemen and gentlemen of the MCC’ who, at the last, claimed him as one of their own.
That was not the case in the 1820s, but the gradual spread of round-arm bowling was forcing conservative opinion to rethink its opposition. The traditionalists, however, had powerful advocates on their side. Thomas Lord, as ever, clung to the past. William Ward continued to be resolutely opposed, perhaps, as E.H. Budd unkindly noted, because he couldn’t bat against it. Other dissenters included William Denison, the foremost cricket writer; Frederick Beauclerk – but only, some said, when he had to face it; and John Nyren, son of Richard, the old captain of Hambledon, who feared it would change the character of the game. These attitudes did not spring from a rosy-eyed view of the past: those who held them simply opposed what they feared.
The schism was sharp, but events were forcing the diehards on the defensive. The reformers needed an advocate, someone of standing who could, with pen and tongue, bridge with guile and diplomacy the irreconcilable differences that were tearing cricket apart. A solution was needed that would spare the embarrassment of those who ruled cricket and were seeing their edict ignored. Fortunately, such a man was at hand. George Knight was a round-arm bowler of some skill. More importantly, he had intellect, cool judgement and a gift for words that must have been genetic. For Knight was not the name with which his father had been born. That name was altogether more famous.
Fifty years earlier in Hampshire, a parish rector, the Reverend George Austen, tended his flock and supplemented his meagre living from pastoral duties by educating boys in his rectory. These were the great days of Hambledon Cricket Club, and for recreation the students played cricket. It is likely that the vicar’s own children joined in, including his eldest daughter Jane – Jane Austen.
The Austen family had modest means in a world in which wealth, property and social position were all. Jane Austen wrote six of the greatest novels in the English language, but did not enjoy huge success in her own lifetime. Her first published novel was Sense and Sensibility (1811), but that was not the first she had written. It was preceded by First Impressions, which was rejected and only published in 1813, after huge revisions and with a new title, Pride and Prejudice. After her death in 1817 she became iconic. Kipling rhymed:
Jane lies in Winchester – blessed be her shade!
Praise the Lord for making her, and her for all she made!
And while the stones of Winchester, or Milsom Street, remain
Glory, love and honour unto England’s Jane.
Not all were enamoured. Mark Twain, not a fan, wrote: ‘Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.’
But the Austen family have a claim upon history that goes beyond literature. In 1783 Jane’s elder brother Edward was adopted by a wealthy distant cousin, Thomas Knight of Godmersham, and in 1812 Edward Austen officially became Edward Knight. Edward had married in 1791, and he and his wife Elizabeth had eleven children. Four of the boys, Edward, George, Henry and Brook, were to play first-class cricket: Edward and George for both Kent and Hampshire, Brook for Kent and Henry for Sussex. It is George, Jane Austen’s favourite nephew, who is the ‘One Knight, a south-country bowler’ referred to in Lord Verulam’s inaccurate memory of the origin of round-arm bowling. And it was the same George Knight who was to take up the cudgels with the MCC in the quest to legalise round-arm bowling.
George Knight’s interest in cricket arose in his childhood. The game was a favourite pastime for the Knight boys at home, and later at Winchester College. If, as Lord Verulam recalled, young George’s sister bowled to him, another prospect arises: might not his famous aunt, Jane Austen, have done so as well?
The Austen/Knight cricketing dynasty went far beyond Aunt Jane’s four nephews: Edward’s sons Wyndham (Kent) and Philip (Cambridge University and Gentlemen of Kent) played first-class cricket, as did his grandson Sir Evelyn Bradford (Hampshire). His brother Henry also had grandsons who played first-class cricket – Lewis D’Aeth (MCC) and Edward D’Aeth (Oxford University). Jane’s elder brother James had seven cricketing grandsons, of whom four, her great-nephews, played first-class cricket: Cholmeley and Charles Austen-Leigh for MCC, Spencer for Sussex and Arthur Austen-Leigh for Gentlemen of England. Somewhere in the Austen genes there must have been that precious gift for hand–eye coordination that marks out a talent for ball games.
Even Jane’s niece Fanny had cricketing connections: her brother- in-law was Henry Knatchbull (Kent and Oxford University), while her own sons included H.T. Knatchbull-Hugessen (President of Kent County Cricket Club) and William Knatchbull-Hugessen (Kent). Another of Fanny’s sons was Edward, first Lord Brabourne, whose son Cecil played first-class cricket (Kent and Cambridge University). Elizabeth Knight, Jane Austen’s niece, was the mother of another President of Kent CCC, Ernest Rice.
Even that is not the sum total of the Austen family legacy to first-class cricket. The four Knight brothers had first cousins, William and John Deedes, who played first-class cricket for Kent, and Sir Brook Bridges, twice elected President of Kent CCC. William also became President of the MCC. There is one final – and rather poignant – Austen connection to cricket. Jane never married, but she did accept an offer of marriage from Harris Bigg-Wither, only to change her mind overnight: Bigg-Wither’s grandson became a prominent cricketer in north Hampshire.
Despite this galaxy of Austen family cricketing connections, it is Jane’s nephew George who left the most indelible mark. In 1827–28 George, a member of the West Kent Club, played for Kent as a hard-hitting batsman and round-arm bowler. An old poem describes his skills:
As a bowler first rate, as a bat far from vile,
And he bowls in the new march of intellect style.
Recollections of George Knight suggest a player sufficiently talented to play five times between 1827 and 1837 for the Gentlemen in their annual fixture against the Players. His highest score in a top-class match was 50 runs at Lord’s in 1825, ironically for the arch-conservative Mr William Ward’s XI against Mr H. Lloyd’s XI. Despite his evident gifts George did not, apart from cricket, live up to the family talents: ‘He was,’ said his nephew Lord Brabourne, ‘one of those men who are clever enough to do almost anything, but live to their lives’ end very comfortably doing nothing.’ It is a damning assessment of an able man, but it ignores the mark George left on cricket, where – with Lillywhite and Broadbridge – he popularised round-arm bowling and changed the game forever.
Outside the MCC a compromise to the problem was being sought. When Kent played Sussex at the Vine, Sevenoaks, it was agreed that the bowling should be neither ‘a throw nor a jerk’, but that the ball must be delivered either underarm or with a straight arm below the shoulder. Slowly but surely round-arm was forcing its way into cricket, although under the strict laws of the game it remained illegal. At the beginning of 1827 George Knight embarked on a campaign to persuade the MCC to repeal Law 10 and replace it. He set out his case in letters to the Sporting Magazine.
In his first and most important letter, of 15 January 1827, he gave notice that he would seek a change in the law. He prepared the ground with care. No law, he reminded the readers, had ever existed to set out the manner of bowling. Underarm bowling had served the game well until batting techniques improved, but was now ineffective: this lack of balance between bat and ball was causing cricket to decline. Nor was round-arm bowling novel, since it had been in common use for a decade. This bedrock of his argument was supplemented with a half-truth intended to spare embarrassment to the MCC if they changed Law 10. Knight argued – with the subtle drafting skills of his Aunt Jane – that round-arm bowling had only been outlawed when, in a match at Brighton, a bowler had raised his hand above his head. The MCC were correct, Knight wrote, to act against overarm bowling, but not round-arm. He would propose only to legalise round-arm. This presentation of the MCC having banned round-arm in error as they dealt with a greater evil was a dubious, but expedient, component of a seductive case in which Knight was seeking allies without provoking opponents.
He had another hurdle to overcome: the attack on round-arm bowling had focused on the claim that it was throwing, not bowling. Knight demolished this with ease: ‘To call [round-arm] throwing is ridiculous. If a man were to attempt throwing a hundred yards … would he deliver the ball with his arm extended horizontally?’ Since the answer to this was evidently no, the ‘throwing’ advocates were forced on the defensive. Knight concluded by promising that a subsequent letter would contain a definition of an appropriate law.
Knight’s argument fell on the controversy like an unexploded bomb, but demolition experts were swift to respond, and the argument raged on. Undaunted, Knight prepared his case further at his estate at Godmersham Park, and wrote a second letter on 15 February 1827. He set out the inadequacy of the existing law, noting that a bowler might bowl from one end ‘at Mary-le-bone itself’ and have his deliveries accepted as legal by one umpire, yet might bowl with the same action from the other end and be no-balled by the second umpire. Since this was absurd, and yet was known to be true, Knight’s case for some change in the law was unarguable. He went on to advocate the change he sought, once more deferring to the wisdom of the MCC. The Kent and Sussex matches, he pointed out, were ‘played according to the very law, word for word, which I now propose, having been made with the express conditions, and chiefly for the purpose of trying its efficacy’. The umpires, he noted, had found this law to be clear-cut and easy to enforce. The message was clear: Knight’s law worked, and the existing Law 10 did not.
He concluded by seeking to address the criticism that batsmen would be injured by a style of bowling that would increase the pace of the ball. In doing so, he returned to the adage that cricket was a ‘manly’ game: ‘It has been said “this bowling will break our shins and knuckles”; to which I answer, that the first maxim I remember as a boy was, “Never be afraid of the ball.” Men are not made of brown paper: I have seen many kinds of bowling I could not play, but never one I would not face.’ This assertion undermined one of the better points of the traditionalists’ case, and turned it into an object of scorn: it was a cunning conclusion to Knight’s campaign.
As the round-arm controversy rumbled on, three ‘experimental’ games were agreed between ‘England’ and ‘Sussex’, in which the county team would be permitted to bowl round-arm but the England XI would not. The games were played at Sheffield, Lord’s and Brighton, and – since old habits died hard – a side bet of a thousand guineas a side was laid to sweeten the occasion.
At Sheffield on 4 June 1827, Lillywhite and Broadbridge led Sussex to a comprehensive seven-wicket win over an all-professional England team. At Lord’s the England team included the amateur George Knight and William Ashby, two leading proponents of round-arm bowling, together with an implacable opponent, William Ward. There is no evidence that Knight or Ashby bowled round-arm, although they both took wickets; but Sussex won once more, by three wickets. The likelihood that Knight and Ashby bowled conventional underarm is confirmed by an extraordinary statement issued at the close of the game by the eight professionals of the England side, including Ashby. They asserted that they would ‘not play the third match … unless the Sussex bowlers play fair – that is, abstain from throwing’. This was an odd intervention, since the games had been set up precisely to test round-arm bowling. Moreover, it is a mystery how Ashby could have signed such a declaration, and how George Knight could have permitted it to be issued. It is possible that Ashby was overborne by his fellow professionals, and that Knight did not know about it until after it had been issued: in any event the professionals soon backed down, and the third game at Brighton went ahead. This time Knight did bowl round-arm, and England, despite a lamentable first innings total of 27, won the game by 24 runs.
The impact of round-arm was evident, although the MCC committee was still in no mood to sanction it. But the walls of resistance were crumbling. The experimental games were sandwiched by other matches that year in which round-arm bowling was used. The Gentlemen and Players met twice at Lord’s: in the first game, played before the experimental matches, round-arm bowling was permitted, although George Knight was no-balled repeatedly, including for one delivery with which he bowled Thomas Beagley, the finest left-handed batsman of the day. In the second game round-arm bowling was banned, and of twenty-four balls bowled by Knight, only four were allowed.
At Lord’s the diehards seemed still to be prevailing, but after a lengthy meeting of the MCC in May 1828, the pressure for reform carried the day. The law was amended to permit the hand being raised as high as the elbow, and the back of the hand was allowed to be uppermost, with the arm extended horizontally. George Knight had won.
The victory must have been very sweet for John Willes, now settled in Sutton Valence to a life of hunting, shooting and coaching the village cricket team. Sutton Valence and its neighbours were cricketing rivals, and on match days he would entertain the teams at close of play in a liquid and lavish fashion. Edward Hodges recalls the players raising their glasses of whisky and brandy to serenade their patron’s love of hunting:
There was Spero, Spendigo, Bonnylass and Truelove,
And Ruler that never looked behind him.
Willes sought out talent in the local villages, and one youth caught his eye: a young giant, blessed with the natural gift of pace but raw and wildly inaccurate. His name was Alfred Mynn, and he and his cricketing brother Walter were the sons of a farmer at Harrietsham – a village without a cricket team. It is likely that young Alfred only began to play the game in his late teens.
Willes noted Mynn’s strength of arm and shoulder, cut down his lengthy run-up to a mere six paces, and preached to him the virtues of accuracy. This was not easy for the round-arm bowler. Underarm bowling – and the overarm bowling that lay thirty-five years in the future – relied on the arm pointing straight down the wicket as the ball was released. But round-arm bowling did not: at the point of delivery the arm was horizontal to the shoulder and an arm’s length wide of it, which made accuracy difficult. Willes set Mynn to practise, practise, practise, and his protégé was keen not to disappoint, although control of line and length did not come easily. But Willes was patient; he knew he had uncovered a rare talent.
In 1835 a further concession was made, allowing the bowler to raise his hand to shoulder height, although it was re-emphasised that the ball must be bowled, and not ‘thrown’ or ‘jerked’. Once more, the law of cricket had caught up with reality, and the scene was set for the era of round-arm bowling and the emergence of the first superstar of cricket: it would be the village lad that Willes had coached – Alfred Mynn.
* Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game.