Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/56

of the shoulder, and made the ball come with his arm, is practically extinct. About the year 1844 there were two famous umpires, Dark and Caldecourt, who held different views on the important question of leg before wicket, and the question became so acute that during the progress of a match at Lord's the matter was referred then and there to the M.C.C. Committee. The result was that the ruling was made that the ball must pitch in a straight line from wicket to wicket, not from hand to wicket; thus making it difficult for a round-arm bowler, bowling round the wicket, to get a man l.b.w. Scoring was kept within reasonable limits in those days by the fact that wickets were not so true, owing to the mowing machine not having been invented nor the heavy roller, and bowlers bowled round the wicket as well as over. Now, however, there is no doubt that inability to get a man out l.b.w. has handicapped round-the-wicket bowling, and this rendering of the l.b.w. rule made by the M.C.C. about 1844 has had far-reaching effects on the development of the game, for it has been the principal cause of the disestablishment of round-the-wicket round-arm bowling.