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[feverpitch]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1693245,00.html


A swansong about fast bowlers

Neville Cardus
Friday January 24, 1975
The Guardian

It is easy to imagine, from the reports of the Test matches in Australia, that the fast, short-pitched, rising ball bowled by Thomson and Lillee is a newly-invented menace to the physical well-being of batsmen. Indeed, I expect to read a statement from some sociologist informing us that the fast bouncer and Thomson and Lillee are byproducts of the present-day revival of violence everywhere, letter-bombs, bombs, hijacking, etc. Our sociologist could argue that Thomson and Lillee are hijackers, saying to the batsmen: "Surrender to us your wicket, or we'll put you in hospital." Alas, there is nothing new under the sun, or the moon. When I was a small boy I saw the Australian bowler Cotter attacking England's batsmen at Old Trafford. I feared he might hurt my favourite cricketer, R. H. Spooner. In his first over two balls catapulted high above the head of the Australian wicket-keeper.

At Trent Bridge, in this same rubber of 1905, Cotter blasted his way through the England first innings. John Gunn told me, years afterwards, that at the outset of England's second innings, A. C. MacLaren was seen pacing up and down the dressing-room, padded-up, and muttering to himself: "I'll bloody well Cotter him." And MacLaren scored 140, dismissing Cotter's bouncers contemptuously from his presence.

Only yester-year the West Indians, Hall and Griffith, menaced cranium and thorax; Hall broke the left wrist of Cowdrey at Lord's in 1963 - and Dexter put Hall to the sword with the high disdain of MacLaren. Have the cricket reporters in Australia forgotten Gregory and Macdonald bowling ferocious bouncers in Armstrong's Australian team of 1921?

At Trent Bridge, Gregory with a bouncer knocked out Ernest Tyldesley, the ball hitting his head then falling on the stumps. After the match I saw Tyldesley's more famous brother, J. T. Tyldesley, and I expressed to him my sympathy with Ernest. But J. T. was not at all sympathetic. "He was trying to hook and ran into the ball. When a batsman tries to hook he should move over to the offside, then if the ball is not at the right height to hook, he leaves it alone, and the ball passes harmlessly over his left shoulder."

We can sum up the contemporary England batsmen's fearsome notion of the bouncer, and the general idea that a bouncer is not quite cricket, by pointing out that one of the great strokes in all the batsman's repertory is the hook. And the hook could not have been invented and perfected, except against the short-pitched bouncer.
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· This was Cardus's last Guardian piece before his death in February 1975.

[Blwe_torch]

Thats a beautiful piece...reminds me of the ferocious hookers Ian Chappel and Roy Fredericks..and also our own Mohinder Amarnath.

[Blwe_torch]

BTW...feverpitch..how did u decide which section to put this article in? Lesser known cricketers or Cricket Knowledge?

[feverpitch]

Well, I remember reading another article on Cotter by Cardus a long time ago. Never managed to locate it on the net. Anyway, thought both Cardus and the rest of the names mentioned here need some advertising.