form of attack. We hear of Rhodes being contrasted with Peel, and Peel discussed in relation to Peate, and so on in thousands of instances, but the Old Man stands by himself, with a style, a method, a success of his own.
Of really good amateur slow bowlers, during the last twelve years, in which time I have been more or less nearly connected with first-class cricket, there has been a phenomenal dearth.
They can literally be counted on the fingers of a man's hand. As I write only two stand out—C. L. Townsend and C. M. Wells. Of course there have been others, and there are others, but unless I have missed my way through the long lists of bowlers through which I have passed, I have lighted on no names that, without some slight stretch of the imagination, one could place on anything like the same level with the two already mentioned. Should there be any, I sincerely apologise for their omission, A. G. Steel and E. A. Nepean never entered into my short first-class cricket experiences.
I have met them both, however, in club games, and even with the small amount of natural and acquired intelligence at my disposal, I could not fail to see how good they must have been at their best. One feat of Nepean's I remember well. He was playing for the Gentlemen v. the Players at the Oval. Arthur Shrewsbury was batting, and Nepean was bowling, if my recollection fails me not, at the gasworks end, and, greatly to the astonishment of many of us present, bowled him round his legs!
