Empire Cricket Booklet

•

RICHARD PARRY AND DALE SLATER

play 'ha[d] not been nearly as conspicuous as usual, since with the ball doing curious things, it was not very easy to calculate with exactness just what it was going to do'. 56 Furthermore, the googly completely re-invigorated leg-spin bowling, which had degenerated into a kind of leg-rolling pitched outside leg stump to a leg-side field, sometimes even eight- or nine-strong, as purveyed by Warwick Armstrong and Notts's A. 0.Jones.And as noted, the advent of new skills and techniques on one side of cricket's economic equation generally stimulates, sooner or later, corresponding developments on the other. Sooner or later, because there is little doubt that the short-term effects of the googlywere dramatic.As A.G.Moyes reported, when first faced by the googly, Australia's best batsmen like Trumper decided that if one reached the pitch of the delivery the direction of turn was immaterial, but few saw things as clearly, and others 'retreated on to their stumps, covered the line of approach with their pads, surrendered the initiative, turned the body to face four-square to the ball, ... playing the ball from a cramped position which prevented driving, and which left the batsman hopelessly inadequate to the main purpose of his existence, that of making runs'. 57 Yet even before Maclaren had delivered his lament for his lost youth, the emergence of Arthur Mailey, followed soon after by Clarrie Grimmett and Bill O'Reilly, showed how well post-war Australia had taken the googly to heart. And though there were clearly other factors involved, not least the new 'mental economy of batting', 58 Australia was soon to see the advent of Don Bradman, Bill Woodfull, Bill Ponsford, Archie Jackson, and Stan McCabe, all of whom, having internalised the lessons of swing and googly bowling and refined their techniques accordingly, batted according to the 'professional' paradigm Maclaren denigrated, but are nonetheless regarded as the vanguard of batting's second Golden Age.After all, had Fry himself not said of Grace that he made 'utility the criterion of style'? And what was the key to Bradman's style if not utility in its most concentrated form? 59 From a post-war vantage, the belle epoque must have glowed with a tragic intensity; and it was perhaps Maclaren's personal tragedy that he lived beyond many of his contemporaries to witness the amateur game's decline and gradual

'deteriorate batting' from the spectators' point of view. He saw the googly as being in its infancy and likely to become considerably more skilful - Bosanquet taught Schwarz and Schwarz taught the others, each becoming better than their mentors. And he felt that googly bowling, while a very great invention, would enormously increase defence at the expense of scoring shots and that cover drives, the pre-eminent shot of the 'Golden Age', would vanish as batsmen puzzled over the direction and extent of the tum. He gives the example of Tom Hayward, the pre-eminent driver of his day, stumped playing the cover drive against Vogler twice and Faulkner once in his first three innings of the 1907 Tests, and ending up with a top-score of 24 in his five innings. 52 Likewise in South Africa: Maitland Hathorn, who had been a successful batsman on the 1904 tour as well as a Transvaal team mate of Schwarz, felt that googly bowling, by creating uncertainty in the mind of the batsman, meant they would become cramped and awkward in their style of play. He too was not pleased that googly bowling had come to stay. 53 Ultimately, in the case of South African batting, he was proved right, though perhaps for the wrong reasons. Laying all batting ills at the googly's door remained a common theme as amateurs scrambled to shore up their place in the game and the ideology they profited by. Few professionals left records of their attitude to the googly, but those who did such as Jack Hobbs seem to have regarded it as simply another obstacle to be overcome, no different in kind from any other delivery. With the simplicity of genius, Hobbs, who rated the South African googly bowlers the best all-round attack he ever faced, contended that the only way to master the googly was to 'spot it, and having spotted it, play it accordingly', adding that he doubted anyone could bowl him a googly he couldn't spot. 54 Whether Tom Hayward would have shared his relaxed view would be interesting to know.What is clear from the above is that, Fry aside, few amateurs were as sanguine. As late as 1922, Archie Maclaren could accuse the googly bowlers of having 'kill[ed] the beauty of high class batting'; and in 1924, of being 'the root of all evil in the modern game'. 55 Adherents of the new bowling could of course point to the opposite: as early as 1903, in its seasonal review, Cricket magazine observed that leg