Contents
Introduction
The key point that needs to be emphasised at the outset concerning cricket in the Eighteenth Century is that we are talking solely about underarm bowling throughout this period. Overarm bowling lay a long time into the future.
Once that is understood, any discussion of the techniques of Eighteenth Century cricket must start by acknowledging a crucial break-point. Around 1775, perhaps earlier, bowlers, anxious in improve their effectiveness, developed the length ball to replace the rolled or skimmed delivery and this in turn revolutionarised bat design and batting techniques.
I would suggest that there was probably another break point somewhat earlier in the century – this was when the hockey-style bat was replaced by the shoulderless bat and I would speculate that this could have been the result of bowlers changing from a rolled style of delivery to a skimmed delivery where the ball bounced a few times before reaching the batter. The three styles of bats are illustrated below.
This illustration of the evolution of the cricket bat is based on one that first appeared in the 1871 book, Echos From Old Cricket Fields by Fredrick Gale, albeit with the hockey stick style bat added. Note, none of the bats are spliced.
Approximate dates are:
1 – Hockey style -1720
2 – Shoulderless – 1750
3 – Modern design – 1774
An important point to note is the second bat, the shoulderless one, is very different to hockey-style bat, and in fact, has more in common with the modern bat. Many writers however group them together as ‘curved bats’. Even as distinguished a writer as FS Ashely-Cooper in The Hambledon Men reproduces an image of a hockey-style bat and says it was used in the early days of Hambledon whereas in fact they would have disappeared well before the Hambledon era was underway. A photo of a shoulderless bat would have been more apposite.
These three eras will be dealt with separately, but of course, in practice, there would have been a long period of transition. There is not a great deal of documentation about the first era, and not that much for the second, so the text below relies more on speculation.
The first period – pre 1730s – Hockey style bat, rolled delivery
There is no textbook of cricket techniques for this period. Any ideas we have come from an examination of equipment, paintings and engravings and deducing something from what we know of later periods which were an evolution of earlier techniques.
I suggest the hockey style bat was deployed in the Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Centuries against the ball rolled along the ground. The batter would have positioned himself towards square leg and reached out, holding the bat at an angle with the blade consequently being flush with the ground. The ball would then either have been blocked or hit into the off side.
The second period – 1730s to c1775 – shoulderless bat, skimmed delivery
I further suggest that as the years went by, a different bowling technique emerged, that of skimming the ball so that it bounced several times before reaching the batter. To combat this, the bat became wider and the shoulderless bat emerged, one more able to cope with the ball a little off the ground. I should say there is little by way of direct evidence of this development, but one witness I would like to call is the famous picture entitled ‘Cricket as Played at the Artillery Ground‘, painted in 1935:
If you look closely at the image, you can see the artist (Hayman) is at trouble to show the ball casting a shadow a little way away, thus indicating it was off the ground. It is however a hockey-style bat in use, perhaps though it was already becoming anachronistic. The same artist was to produce another cricket image five years later and shoulderless bats were being used.
More consideration of this point can be found here.
More about this era can also be gleaned from Nyren’s account of some of the first generation of Hambledon players, that is to say, those who were playing before the introduction of the length ball. What we learn is that bowlers did present a great deal of variety. Brett was very quick, (he delivered the ball delivering his ball fairly, high, and very quickly, quite as strongly as the jerkers, and with the force of a point blank shot) Lambert moved the ball from off to leg, Noah Mann was left-handed, and he gave a curve to the ball the whole way. Batsmen by contrast are not subject to much by way of analysis. In short, they are either attacking, defensive or hopeless.
What brought this period to an end in the view of all authorities was the development of the length ball in the 1770s.
The third period – 1770s and beyond – straight bat, length delivery
General
The length ball was possibly first used by Richard Nyren, and developed by Lumpy Stevens and then by David Harris over the course of the 1770s. Sources of information – textbooks (4), illustrations, Bowyer, Beldham
Here we have two types of information available to us:
Firstly, there are the instruction manuals of the early Nineteen Century and secondly there are records of discussions with old cricketers. In the later cases, it is necessary to take some care because some of the ideas expressed will arise from another era – that of roundarm bowling which was legalised in 1835. Nonetheless, techniques will only have evolved only slowly, so there will some information about older methods of play that can be deduced with reasonable likelihood.
The first category includes the following
- Rules and Instructions for Playing the Game of Cricket – T Boxall – 1801. Not generally available, but very similar to the next book.
- The Young Cricketer’s Tutor – John Nyren – 1833
- Felix on the Bat: being a scientific inquiry into the use of the cricket bat – Nicholas Wanostrocht – 1845
- The Cricket Tutor – Rev James Pycroft – 1862
- Practical hints on Cricket – William Clarke – c1850
In the second category are:
- John Bowyer Smokes a Pipe with me – from Frederick Gale – Echoes from Old Cricket Fields
- Conversation with Billy Beldham in The Cricket Field – Rev James Pycroft – (1859)
And then of course, there are Nyren’s writings in Cricketers of My Time and John Mitford review of it. So let’s make a start with bowling, that is of course where the ball originates.
Bowling
Here I going to start with the recollections of John Bowyer (career 1810 – 1828). Speaking about bowling generally, he said:
One man would turn his wrist with his thumb right out; another would do precisely the reverse. One would run with his right hand up in the air and bring it down with a swing, like the fan of a windmill; and another'- Lambert, the little farmer, for instance-would sent them in with his hand almost on the ground, and yet pitch a good length. Some bowler turned the elbow out, like old Clarke, of Nottingham, and bowled four balls of a different pitch and spin, all pretty lengths, one just out of your reach, another a regular tice [i.e. enticing].
Clearly, variations was central to the challenges batsmen faced, in pace movement, flight, line and length. Nyren’s text spoke of the way to run in, how to hold the ball and where to aim for length (e.g. – quick bowlers, about four and a half years before the wicket) and line (a little outside off (what as come to be known as the corridor of uncertainty). He notes that the cricketer William Lambert (career 1801 – 1817) gave a twist to the ball on release (spin) but thinks this too risky to attempt. All of this chimes well with what bowlers attempt to do now. Furthermore, in Beldham’s conversation with Pycroft, he makes the point in his early days all bowlers bowled as fast as they were able and that the first lobbing bowler he ever saw was Tom Walker of Hambledon (career 1786 – 1802), this being very much towards the end of the period we are considering. It is clear that slow spin of the type that became commonplace in the game generally, was not well developed before 1900.
Nyren also emphasised the difficulties in facing the quickest bowlers and the threat of being wrapped on the knuckles by a fast-rising delivery. His writings gives more details on how this might be achieved: he suggests three fundamental qualities needed were high delivery, upright body and good length.
He spoke highly of David Harris’s ability and it is clear from the illustration that he embodied at least the first two of these principles and, from all accounts, the third as well. If you can image this bowler running to the wicket for a few steps, getting into the position shown and then lowering his arm and hurling the ball to the batsman underarm. release below the elbow, that, I suggest, is the classical action of the time.
Batting
Several books of instruction about cricket technique are listed above. Perhaps the most famous of these is the one by Nicholas Wanostrocht, more commonly known as Felix entitled Felix on the Bat. Felix was a leading Nineteenth Century cricketer (career 1830 – 1852) who applied his mind to developing a scientific theory of batting which he set forth in this volume which was published in 1845, not that long after round-arm bowling came in and not seemingly very affected by this development. His book is especially famous for the six illustrations he provided to demonstrate batting technique. My approach to this section will be to consider these illustrations in turn in relation to the ideas of Nyren’s and others about technique. The idea is the illustrations, even if questionable, will help bring the issues to life.
Firstly, the stance, or taking guard, what Felix calls PLAY!. Nyren recommended though taking guard from where the bowler will deliver the ball rather than from middle stump as happens today – not a bad idea methinks. The hands should be close together he notes. The key is that the stance is formed with the legs not too far apart and the batter has the appropriate balance to move backwards or forwards. it seems sound advice that has not changed much over the years
This is not one of Felix’s better illustrations, the subject here seems hopelessly ill prepared. The nautical cap and a sailor’s bow legs doesn’t lend conviction; yo ho ho, me hearties.
Nyren then goes into the forward defensive – front leg forward three feet towards the ball, left elbow up, bat slanted down, back foot in the crease. An interesting question is how much forward play was favoured in the Eighteenth Century itself? In Mitford’s essay he mention the cricketer William Fennex (career 1786-1816) who claimed to be the first to ‘lay down a ball before it had time to rise’ which seems to be a description of forward play. Also, Beldham makes the claim that “Fennex and I by forward play”1 opened peoples eyes as to what could be achieved
Without pads (which would not become used until around 1850), it would require some care to keep the front leg out of the way.
Felix’s forward defensive is quite impressive. The head leads, weight well forward and the bat is straight. The hands are however, a long way apart (contra to Nyren’s advice) so may not work well together.
On the other hand, Nyren recommends the block for the ball pitching short. This shot was the equivalent of the backfoot defensive shot, and Nyren emphasises that the left (front) elbow must be high so as to direct the ball towards the ground. He also says that if the ball rises too high (gets big as we might say now), the batter should let it pass through.
From Felix’s illustration, it would seem he is advocating holding the bat behind the body and as close to the stumps as it was possible to get. The ball is therefore been played very late. While I think that the illustration is showing the bat much too far back It would generally work, the bat would cover most of the stumps. I remember hearing Sir Don Bradman tell a story, the gist of which was he bet a slow bowler he could play him blindfold for an over without getting out. All the Don did was position the bat in front of middle stump hoping the bowler could not often hit the exposed off or leg stump – he was right and won his bet. It seems that kind of thinking is in play with this illustration of the shot.
The draw is one of the most fascinating of Early Cricket shots. Fascinating because it is now entirely obsolete. It was in fact a leg-glance played from the off-side of the body, with the ball being deflected behind the legs which, due to the absence of leg guards, the batter was anxious to keep well out of the way. Important cricket author Rev James Pycroft says however, in The Cricket Tutor: “No man can play underhand bowling well who cannot Draw.” Early Eighteenth Century player John Bowyer recalled that around 1800 “we used to get our runs mostly by draws, little tips in the slips and hard driving on or off”. So it was clearly a key stroke.
The shot illustrated by Felix is similar to the Home Block above , the difference being that the face of the bat angled to deflect the ball to the leg-side rather than being straight on to the bowler. The head position seems to have little to recommend it however, nowhere near over the ball.
Some modern writers have compared the Draw to the shot developed by Natalie Sciver-Brunt known as the Natmeg. This is wrong though, Sciver-Bunt’s shot goes through her legs.
John Bowyer says that “leg-side hitting was almost unknown in first-rate matches [in his early playing days], owing to the straightness of the bowling. This is bourne out by picture of the cricket field which generally show only two fielders on the leg side.
Echoing Bowyers comments, Nyren’s advice is that batters should not be looking to hit any ball to the on-side if it pitches on the stumps. He is at pains to emphasise the importance of the straight bat in all circumstances – given the state of wickets and the absence of pads, this is not surprising.
Felix’s illustration is accompanied by text advising batters how to set themselves for the half-volley, when off or on side. He talks of getting the weight forward and hitting the ball when it is under the leading shoulder.
I would speculate that this was a shot considered too risky for most in the Eighteenth Century game.
The cut, is of course, a key shot in all levels and forms of the current game. The shot would seem to have come of age in the later part of the Eighteenth Century – Beldham, in conversation with Pycroft says “[Harry] Walker and Robinson would wait for the ball till all but past the wicket, and then cut with great force”. They would have been playing mostly in the 1790s. Beldham also speaks of James Saunders (career 1822-1831) who was famous for the cut. Beldham himself was famed for cutting, like the drive, I see it as a shot emerging as the game develops.
In Felix’s illustration, the position of the batter is not bad, but does look a little incongruous as he is already looking at where the ball is going even though he is at the stage of preparing for it to arrive.
Nyren concludes his comments on batting by recapitulating the basic principles – “The body and bat upright – the hands near to each other – the let elbow well turned up – and the legs not too much extended”. Essentially, this is an approach which emphasises defensive approach to batting, something that was understandable in a era where runs were worth rather more than they are today – many innings would register less than one hundred, and over two hundred was a monster score. Batting technique was essentially defensive, with most scoring shots coming from deflection rather than strikes and it was only towards the end of the century that batters started turning their minds as to how to develop skills that would improve the scoring rate.
Fielding
General
Reading Nyren’s text, I notice that fielding is a linger section (eight pages) than either bowling (three pages) or batting (eight pages) – this suggests to me how high it ranked in importance in the early game. Let us start this section by looking at where fielders are likely to be placed. This is an excellent guide, taken from Rules and Instructions for Playing the Game of Cricket, published 1801 and the book Nyren’s text is based on
The caption reads:
| 1. Long stop 2. Long slip 3. Wicket keeper 4. Short slip | 5. Umpire 6. Hitter 7. Point 8. To cover point and middle wicket | 9. Middle wicket 10. Hitter 11. Scorers 12. Leg | 13. Umpire 14. Long field off side 15. Bowler 16. Long field on side |
The title of the illustration is Cricket at Lewes.
What we can see is that there are only two leg side fielders – number 12, called leg, now called deep mid-wicket and number 16, called long field on side, now called long-on. No fielder behind square on the leg side, strange given the prevalence of the draw shot, instead though a fielder not far behind the wicket keeper, the long stop. The off side field seems over-packed, many players just backing up other players. Let us see what Nyren had to say about it all.
Nyren rates the wicket-keeper as the most important position, not least because he would generally have charge of field placing. The advantage the keeper has, according to Nyren, is that he can see the whole of the field from the batsman’s perspective and that he can change the field without the batter’s knowledge and maybe earn a run out opportunity as a result – this would not go down well in the modern game! The position of the keeper is one pace behind the stumps so that he can take catches and get to the stumps to effect a stumping should the opportunity arise. Nyren also suggests that the keeper should be ready to cover the short square leg position (called hip) himself should the need arise.
He then talks of the point fielder, positioned at what we now call silly-point, three and a half yards from the bat and prepared to move in for a catch as soon as the batter looks to be in trouble. There is much about other positions, but it is mostly basic stull like saying that outfielders should be able to throw and run.
Long stop
To me though, the really interesting position is long stop. George Leer was hugely praised for his skill in this position, but why it was so important a position is not that is something that is obvious at first glance. The ball was delivered underarm and therefore relatively slowly and would have further slowed down when it hit the ground. A wicket-keeper was in place who would surely have got in the way of most balls that missed the bat, and any that evaded his grasp would have been slowed down by the long grass. In the modern world, only in the lowest class of youth cricket would a long stop be considered and even than, it would be a duty allocated to the worst fielder, so simple are the duties. And yet its importance was clear. Bowyer talks of some bowlers being so fast that two long stops were needed.
And here, I will divert to take in an anecdote from the Nineteenth century. George Brown was a fast underarm bowler whose career spanned 1819 to 1838. He is said to have once, at practice killed a dog when a ball he had bowled went past the stumps and through a coat held by the longstop, hitting the dog which was behind the coat. Another of his longstops, a man called Dench, insisted on fielding with a sack of straw tied to his chest for protection2. A slight confirmation of this is the painting of Thomas Hope of Amsterdam which shows someone using a cloak to stop the ball during informal cricket practice. Nonetheless, perhaps these are apocryphal, but they nevertheless say something about the awe in which the role of the long stop was seen. Not a sinecure by any means.
So why it is so important ? One clue is again from Bowyer who speaks to Gale about a part of the field he calls the “long-stopping area” and I image this will be a triangular area with the stumps as its apex. Also, Nyren says of him that “he is required t cover many slips [i.e. edges] from the bat, both to the leg and the off-side”3. As is clear from Cricket at Lewes (above) he would be not all that far from the keeper, close enough Nyren says to save the single. So, it would seem his role is to cut off edges either side of the keeper, not simply to cover up the keeper’s errors. In a game where deflections were a crucial source of runs, it becomes to be clear why the best fielder would be allocated to this role and why Nyren has such a high regard for Lear who might only concede as few as two runs in an innings.
Scores
While a massive amount of detail has been collected about Eighteenth Century Important Match, I have come across nothing which suggests anyone has tried to track trends n scores achieved or anything like that. What I have done though is look through Haygarth to see how the scorecards shape up. Such a process soon confirms that run scoring was not then what it is now. As a quick check on this general impression, I looked at one year, chosen at random – 1790. This is what I found:
- There were eleven matches in Haygarth, all two innings, all played to a conclusion.
- Of the total of 40 completed innings, 3 were for less than 50, 17 were less than 100 and 39 were less than 200. The highest was 278.
- A total of 4,675 runs were scored for a loss of 412 wickets, an average of 11.3 per wicket.
- There were no centuries in these matches and 9 fifties. In five of the eleven matches there were no fifties at all and indeed no forties either.
An alternative methodology is to look you look at the records of the best players in matches since designated as first class – their averages are not superficially impressive. These show Small averaging 17, Beldham 21 and Beauclerk 25, and these were the finest batsman of their time.
It could be argued that one run then might be seen as being worth maybe, three runs now, albeit with the ratio declining over time.
The main reason is surely the state of pitches – they were rolled sometimes but were roughly cut and unpredictable. The outfields too were rough and the ball would never have rolled very far. Bats were all one piece (i.e. no cane handle) and unsprung so big hits would not have been easy to come by. Boundaries generally did not exist and so any runs had to be run. This would change over time though, by the early years of the Nineteen Century, a little more attention was given to pitch preparation, at least at the higher level and scores were that bit higher.