Page:The Hambledon Men (1907).djvu/236

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178
THE HAMBLEDON MEN

mendax." "I beg your pardon, sir," he one day said to a gentleman taking guard, "but ain't you Harrow?"

"Then we shan't want a man down there," he said, addressing a fieldsman; "stand for the Harrow drive between point and middle wicket." The time to see Clarke is on the morning of a match. While others are practising, he walks round with his hands under the flaps of his coat, reconnoitring his adversaries' wicket.'

I add further particulars from Mr. Pycroft's Oxford Memories:—'"Clarke's," said Barker, the Nottingham umpire, "was only the old bowling we had before the days of Lillywhite, only it had lain fallow till the old players who were used to it had passed away, and then it came up new to puzzle all England." Clarke bore witness to the same effect. "Warsop of Nottingham," said he, "was an excellent bowler in my style, and yet better was the celebrated William Lambert of Surrey, from whom I learnt more than from any man alive."

'As to Clarke, although he was too old and heavy to field his own bowling well—and this is indispensable for a slow bowler—I doubt if any bowler of my time ever exercised more influence on a game, nor was Clarke ever "found out"; he never was beaten till the last. You might sometimes score from Clarke rather freely, as you might from any bowler I ever knew. But while quite in his play, it required much patience and no little knowledge of the game to play him. I often hear it said, "Clarke would be nowhere in these days," yet Tinley, Mr. V. Walker, and Mr. Ridley, though very far inferior, on their best days have done no little with slows—and slows too of low delivery—whereas Clarke always maintained that a certain elevation was of the very essence of slow bowling; and Clarke, like Mr. Budd, delivered from his hip. Clarke said, "My success depends not on what is called a good length, but on the exact pitch, the one 'blind spot', according to the reach and style of the player." He was also always on the wicket with great spin and twist. "Also," said Clarke, "I can vary my pace with-