In the spring of a year eighteen summers ago three or four of us were
playing cricket on the wilderness of Clapham Common. A young man
watched the game for a little, and eventually took a hand. He bowled to
us and he batted for us, and we learnt something. At the end of half an
hour he left. We asked his name. “Lohmann,” came the reply. We said,
“Good-morning, and thank you.” And to-day I think that there are dozens
of committeemen all over the country, and especially in the county of
Surrey, who would like to go out into the same or a similar wilderness
and encounter another George Lohmann. They may go out hot haste to find
one, but they will return empty-handed.
In reply to the same question that I asked W. G. Grace, Ranjitsinhji
said, “Noble.” Now of Noble I have not had sufficient experience to
write, so I asked him again, and the next answer was, “Jack Hearne”;
and for perfection of action, with its open-shouldered, almost
three-quarter arm swing, I have never seen his equal. He has every
variation of pace, and, on a wicket that suits him, as much off break
as he wants; and he bowls, or did bowl at his best, a length that only
a very few bowlers like Alfred Shaw ever excelled. It has been said
that on a perfect wicket he plays a man in. Well, perhaps he does; but
those of us who on a sticky wicket at Lord’s—and at Lord’s a sticky
wicket spells perdition—have had the temerity to stand up against him,
bowling as he nearly always is from the pavilion end, know with what
difficulty he can be stopped, and with what superhuman effort scored
off.
Two other great medium-paced bowlers appeal immediately to the player
of cricket—Attewell and Mead—both of a wonderful length, and doing a
bit either way, not in the same way as Jack Hearne, who is practically
an off break bowler, with a fast ball going with his arm, but with
distinctive finger or hand break going both ways.
Who does not remember Attewell’s easy, full-faced run up to the wicket,
the splendid control of length—a very machine, but a machine with an
untiring human intelligence. Both these two are perfect gluttons for
work—this end, the other end, both ends, all day and probably all
night if the span of the hours for play were lengthened. Attewell I
should have taken on a good wicket, and Mead on a bad.
The latter I remember years ago at Broxbourne, where he and I led the
attack for the local club, and wonderfully successful he was; but
in those days he bowled almost entirely leg breaks, and it was only,
I believe, after journeying Leytonwards, that he developed the off
theory, with an occasional straight one and with an occasional leg
break, that ultimately gave him the position amongst great bowlers that
he holds to-day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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