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I don't know what's going off out there

Despite our best efforts to prove otherwise, it is actually possible to play cricket to a high standard.  All you need is some athletic ability, natural talent, years of practice, and the ability to learn from those who know.  Now most of us are rather deficient in almost all of these qualities, but we can make some effort to learn from the experts.  These links point to articles on cricket which go a little beyond the basics of get in line, bowl at off stump, keep your eyes on the ball.

The most casual student of cricket history will know the name of C J Kortright, generally regarded as the fastest bowler of the late 19th century.  While skimming through the 1948 Wisden, as you do, I came across this item in which he discusses the art of fast bowling.

C J Kortright - No magic in fast bowling

There are a number of ideas worth thinking about here.  A few examples:

  • I do not favour the modern craze for such expressions as in-swingers, out-swingers, all sorts of spins and swerves. Some bowlers seem to concentrate on these dubious achievements so much that they forget to keep a length and to bowl at the stumps.

  • I didn't worry a great deal about how I held the ball in relation to the seam as long as I got a firm grip on it, and I think most of my contemporaries felt the same. We wanted to be accurate, and to make the ball move a little off the pitch through finger action.

  • I remember Alfred Shaw of Nottinghamshire telling me when I was a youngster why the best bowlers so seldom make runs. He said: After holding a bat for a long time we lose that freshness in ourselves, and that suppleness in the fingers which helps so much in bowling. So it is better not to bat too much when one will soon have to bowl.

I had hoped to learn a little more about bowling from an article subtitled "Bowlers: workman and artists in one" in the 1963 Wisden.  However, there is little technical instruction in the piece.  It's by R C Robertson-Glasgow though, so we can all learn something from it.

R C Robertson-Glasgow: The Joy of Cricket

Can we make this man an honorary member ?

  • Cricket has very various meanings and delights. I suppose the most popular dream of boyhood's cricket is to be making a hundred in a Test. The ambition of most young cricketers seems to concern batsmanship. But, myself, I would always rather have sent the stumps than the ball flying.
    Modesty, no doubt, should forbid mention of any example of such a performance. But the bowler has to work for his great moments, and I don't see why he shouldn't mention some of them, without being condemned as an intolerable bore.

  • Cricket, for all its admirers may say, is a selfish game. Certainly, bowling is. How often, in my cricketing life, I watched others taking wickets that I regarded as mine by rights. Daylight robbery.

  • No; I would not rate Team Spirit as the most ennobling part of cricket. The best part of cricket is the Tour Spirit. No one who has not been on a Cricket Tour, however humble, has tasted the full felicity of the game.
    The Cricket Tourist can discover the joy of irresponsibility and detachment. If he be wise, no correspondence, threatening or otherwise, will be forwarded to him. If he be wiser still, he will have told his employers and his relatives that the tour is in North Wales, whereas in fact it is in Jersey, perhaps the most hospitable of all European Islands.

  • I have always regretted that the Chinaman, who has given his name to a certain type of left-handed delivery, should never have played the game nationally. To-day, there seems less chance than ever of his doing so, as Communism and cricket do not seem to be happy bedfellows.

  • I have played in Portugal, on matting wickets, at Lisbon and Oporto. One of our faster bowlers was erratic both on and off the field, and a source of anxiety to his worthy captain. It was thought that he had missed the ship at the very start, but he was found later playing Jazz on a musical instrument to a partially reluctant audience of fellow-travellers.