Nor any one else either, for Harris was a very fast bowler. But I am inclined to think that there must have been some explanation to be discovered out of the fact that he was by profession—before cricket became his profession—a potter. With the strength of fingers that the potter acquires through working at his clay, he may have had the power of putting an amount of spin on the ball impossible for men whose digits had not gone through this course of training. In underhand bowling such as, after all is said, Harris’s must have been, the spin is almost entirely the work of fingers. The turn of wrist had little share in it; for one thing, it was forbidden to deliver the ball with the knuckles uppermost. And so it may well have been that, whatever the pace with which the ball was propelled, by these singular and statuesque means, through the air, it may have carried so much spin as to leap up twice as fast off the ground, as a billiard ball with much side on will seem to gain twice as much life after touching a cushion. And all that we read of Harris’s bowling shows that the balls did come off the ground with tremendous speed. “His balls,” says Nyren, in another place, “were very little beholden to the ground when pitched; it was but a touch, and up again, and woe be to the man who did not get in to block them, for they had such a peculiar curl that they would grind his fingers against the bat. Many a time have I seen the blood drawn in this way from a batter who was not up to the trick. Old Tom Walker was the only exception. I have before classed him among the bloodless animals.” We have seen, however, that even from him Harris occasionally drew blood. In Harris’s day it was the custom for the bowler to choose the wicket, and it was always his preference to have a bump to pitch on, and so help this rising tendency of the ball off the pitch. Of course this would be the recognised aim of a bowler of to-day, but it was not so recognised then, and indeed Stevens, nicknamed “Lumpy,” generally regarded as the second-best bowler to Harris of his day, always liked to bowl “o’er a brow” in order to make his balls shoot. The result was, as Nyren points out, that Lumpy—Lumpy of the honestly avowed preference for bowling “o’er a brow”—would hit the wicket oftener, but that more catches were given off Harris, though his balls often went over the wicket. But there was no manner of doubt as to which was the finer bowler. Harris was the man. And now as to its effect on the batting. Notice these words of Beldham, for really they contain the kernel of the whole matter: “Woe be to the man who did not get in to block them, for they had such a peculiar curl that they would grind his fingers against the bat.”