They can also bowl longer at a stretch, they can vary their pace,
they can alter the whole principle of their attack to suit the varying
stages of a wicket in a way that is given to very few of our really
fast bowlers. There are, too, so many that one must include in this
class, that it is a matter of considerable difficulty to make anything
like an adequate selection. There are some, however, whose names will
immediately occur to the minds of every average cricketer.
I asked W. G. Grace not long ago, “Who was the best medium-paced bowler
you ever played against?” Almost without thought the answer came back,
“George Lohmann”; and there is many another player who, asked the same
question, would make answer in a similar strain.
We all knew that tall, fair-haired, broad, rather high-shouldered
figure—a splendid worker in every section of the game. Great as the
pleasure was in studiously watching the man bowl, or watching him bat,
taking the extraordinary risks he did, to my mind an almost equally
enjoyable thing was to watch him at extra slip. Before his time there
were good slips, bad slips, fast-asleep slips, and since his time every
variety of “slipper” has passed across the stage, but none ever had the
same catlike activity, the same second-sight to practically foretell
the flight, the pace of a ball, and the same safe pair of hands to hold
it in.
But I am presumably writing on bowling and not fielding. The following
description of George Lohmann by C. B. Fry is one of the very best
things of the many that he has done:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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