The classic early instructional cricket book by the renowned Kent and All-England batsman, Nicholas Wanostrocht, who played under the name Felix, was a schoolmaster at Blackheath and played cricket as an amateur in the early Nineteenth Century. This famous work gives a fascinating insight into the techniques employed by cricket’s earliest batsmen, with strokes like the Draw and the Home Block being part of batting technique. It is particularly famous for the six illustrations of such shots, produced by Felix and prints which have graced the walls of many an Olde Worlde setting. It must be said that such prints tend to be of slightly altered versions of the drawings, that is to say ones without the nautical cap.
Felix produced this drawing as a supposed example of a guard sometimes taken but which is not advised. It is the most ridiculous cricket illustration I have ever seen, I ran a contest to see what people thought was going on – the best suggestion was rowing without a boat. It may also be of some use as a Pilates exercise, I am not qualified to say.
The book also provides advice on how to build a capapulta, the first bowling machine ever. A working model did exist and a game of some sorts was played in 1844 in which the machine was a key bowler.
