Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/57

Batting, as I have said before, is made and formed by the bowling, so in its development it has adapted itself to the style of bowling it has had to meet. Up to the year say 1870 there was a prevailing method of round-arm bowling, and fast round-arm bowling, as I have said, is more difficult to keep dead straight and accurate than is overhead. This fact made it unnecessary for batsmen to hit in any style but what may be called the orthodox; there was no pulling either of the pitched-up ball or the long hop; and I can well remember murmurs of disapprobation in the Lord's Pavilion when a ball was hit across the wicket. An off ball was hit to the off, an on ball to the on, and for about twelve years every batsman got a fair share of balls to hit. About the year 1874 there arose another feature of bowling, which was that, instead of being mainly fast or medium, it became slow. Shaw, Southerton, Peate, Bates, Flowers, Watson, and many others may be quoted as flourishing at this time, but why fast bowling should have gone out of fashion so much as it did I cannot quite explain. All fast bowling was child's play to W. G. Grace in the days of which I am speaking, when he was