Page:Cricket (Lyttelton, 1898).djvu/113

they are of good length, and they break back very quickly; but he could bowl a fast ball that came in from leg, and, like all other bowlers who break, he got a lot of wickets with plain straight balls that went straight from the pitch. He never minded being hit, and in the six years beginning in 1885 he actually got 1087 wickets, an average of 161 a year, at a cost of about 14 runs a wicket. Surrey had been under a cloud from about 1870 till Lohmann came out in 1884 and 1885, and mainly by his efforts she rushed to the top of the tree: in fact, Surrey owes nearly as much to Lohmann as Gloucestershire does to W. G. Grace. There was a sparkle about Lohmann's play in every way: he made matches interesting; he did not bowl maidens, so the batting did not become dull. His fielding was fascinating in its quickness and brilliancy; his hitting was sometimes severe, and his whole play was charged with pluck. Take him altogether, in any representative eleven to play against the immortals, I should, I think, after Grace, select Lohmann.