Empire Cricket Booklet

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RICHARD PARRY AND DALE SLATER

managed 5/48 off 11.5 overs in the second innings and the match, perhaps fittingly, ended in a tie. Bosanquet laughingly complained to the press of 'plagiarism'. 32 Returning to Lord's in July, the South Africans gave further evidence of their progress by brushing aside a strong though unrepresentative England XI - containing Jessop, J. T. Hearne and (without an audible murmur) Ranjitsinhji - by 189 runs. Schwarz contributed a fine century in addition to match fi gur es of 8/106. By this time, the googly had run its course as far as Bosanquet was concerned; though he had employed it successfully against the South African team early in the 1904 tour, it was now too well known and understood, and batsmen, having got over their

Frank Mitchell, in the following game against Oxford University, that a first innings lead of 264 runs provided enough of a cushion for a little innovation. 30 His resolve may have been stiffened by the fact that in a game taking place simultaneously with the Cambridge University game - 6, 7 and 8 June - Bosanquet took 7/83 and 4/68 for I Zingari versus Gentlemen of England. Schwarz took 5 for 27 in 7.2 overs in the second innings and never looked back. By the end of the tour, in all matches, he had bowled 403.5 overs and took 96 wickets at 14.81, an extraordinary performance given the difficulty of mastering the new style. Both the aggressive J. J. Kotze and the tireless Jimmy Sinclair took more wickets overall, but both took 38.19 balls

Reggie Schwarz was an English rugby international who became one of Abe Bailey's secretaries and played in twenty Tests for his adopted country, taking 55 wickets at 25.76

initial shock, were working on counters. Schwarz redeveloped it in a new form, launching it as an entirely new threat by bowling it at something like medium pace, and with a control that had hitherto eluded Bosanquet, as well as a good deal of topspin that gave him his pace off the pitch. If not for this, the googly would probably have died a quick death as a curiosity that once won an Ashes series.

per wicket in comparison to the 25.23 balls per wicket it took Schwarz. 31 On 20 June, Schwarz found himself at Lord's facing Middlesex for a head-to-head confrontation with his mentor. Bosanquet distinguished himself with the bat, scoring 110 and 44, but he did less well with the ball, taking 2/79 off 17 overs in the match. Schwarz