Abstract
FOLLOWING up their interesting volume on “Great Batsmen,” the accomplished “Great Bowlers and Fielders” have practically pleted all that action photography can teach the methods of great cricketers. The handsome volume with its 464 action photographs registers for all time the successive positions body in the act of bowling of some of celebrated bowlers of our day, and also certain characteristic attitudes of a number of fielders. From the purely cricketing point the book must ever be of the most enthralling not because it establishes any fundamentally new principle in the art of high-class bowling, but because it proves the wonderful variety of method by which different individual bowlers effect practically the same result. The movements of the body, arm, wrist, hand, and fingers are all coordinated to the one end of imparting to the ball a definite combination of translation and spin. It does not always happen that the bowler hits off the exact combination aimed at, but when he does the future progress of the ball through quiet air and off a good pitch is absolutely definite. There is no difficulty in understanding the dynamics of the “break” the problem is simply that of a rotating sphere impinging obliquely on a rough surface, and is familiar to everyone whd has handled a billiard cue with intelligence. The point of interest to the would-be bowler is how it is effected. This is discussed at considerable length in distinct parts of the book contributed by Messrs. F. R. Spofforth, B. J. T. Bosanquet, and R. O. Schwarz. The introductory chapter by the “Demon Bowler”(to whom the book is dedicated) is capital reading. It is, indeed, rather to be studied than read, and the same remark applies to Mr. Bosanquet's lucid and scientific discussion of the “off-breaking leg-break.”
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K., C. The Dynamics of Bowling 1 . Nature 75, 8–10 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/075008a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/075008a0