To-day he may bowl a trifle slower than he did twenty years ago. It
seems to me, however, that he bowls with very much the same effect. He
is a bowler that stands by himself. As long as I can remember, no one
has ever compared “W. G.” with any other bowler; he stands alone—it
is a distinct form of attack. We hear of Rhodes being contrasted with
Peel, and Peel discussed in relation to Peate, and so on in thousands
of instances, but the Old Man stands by himself, with a style, a
method, a success of his own.
Of really good amateur slow bowlers, during the last twelve years, in
which time I have been more or less nearly connected with first-class
cricket, there has been a phenomenal dearth.
They can literally be counted on the fingers of a man’s hand. As I
write only two stand out—C. L. Townsend and C. M. Wells. Of course
there have been others, and there are others, but unless I have missed
my way through the long lists of bowlers through which I have passed,
I have lighted on no names that, without some slight stretch of the
imagination, one could place on anything like the same level with the
two already mentioned. Should there be any, I sincerely apologise for
their omission. A. G. Steel and E. A. Nepean never entered into my
short first-class cricket experiences.
I have met them both, however, in club games, and even with the small
amount of natural and acquired intelligence at my disposal, I could not
fail to see how good they must have been at their best.
One feat of Nepean’s I remember well. He was playing for the Gentlemen
_v._ the Players at the Oval. Arthur Shrewsbury was batting, and Nepean
was bowling, if my recollection fails me not, at the gas-works end,
and, greatly to the astonishment of many of us present, _bowled him
round his legs!_
Great as was the astonishment of the spectators, it paled before the
wonder of the two in question, and the tale went round on the morrow
that gentle sleep had failed to visit their respective couches on the
evening of this memorable day. One was said to have lain awake all
night marvelling _how on earth he had done it_, and the other _how on
earth he had let it be done!_
Whether the tale be of truth or otherwise I know not, but it was a ball
that probably Nepean will remember long after he has ceased playing
even club cricket.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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