Page:Seventy One Not Out.pdf/34

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18
I COMMENCE MY PUBLIC CAREER.

game throughout the length and breadth of this country.

Clarke's bowling has been described by many writers. Who has not heard of his wonderful varieties of pitch and pace? of how he could make some balls get up from the pitch almost as if he had been bowling over-hand? or of his extraordinary skill in setting out his field? For the "reckoning up" of a batsman's weak play, and his bowling and setting out the field to take advantage of it, I firmly believe he excelled any bowler I ever saw. It has been suggested that Clarke owed a great deal of his success to the fact of his appearing in public late in life, at a time when round-arm bowling had become the fashion, and nearly all the great batsmen who had figured against under-hand had retired. There may be something in this, but it ds not at all detract from the merit of Clarke as a bowler, for we find him, even at the close of his career, getting out regularly good batsmen who had opposed him on many occasions, and who must have become used to all his peculiarities. From what I have read of the old Hambledon Club bowlers I should be inclined to think that Clarke was an exact counterpart of some of them. He was more than an ordinary under-hand bowler, as under-hand bowling was understood both in my time and at the present. He was by no means a bad bat, being a hard and clean hitter; but he was greatly handicapped in this