Googly Bowling
I have been requested to write on what is becoming almost a threadbare topic and one which I approach with much diffidence, inasmuch as I have been out of cricket so much, and have had no opportunity of personally studying the methods of those who are now considered the greatest exponents of the art of the [Photo. by G. W. Beldam.
MR. B. J. T. BOSANQUET. "googly," and can consequently speak only from my own experience, which was obtained some years ago. These intervening years have witnessed great changes, one might almost say a revolution, in the art of bowling, and have given us the spectacle of a visiting team admittedly and decidedly inferior to the best English sides in batting, which was, nevertheless, able, through the skill of its bowlers and the novelty of the methods they employed, to hold its own against an England XI. in this country.
What these bowlers are like in their own country and on matting wickets can readily be gleaned from the records of the two last teams to visit South Africa. While one must appreciate and commend the enterprise CRICKET] of the South African bowlers in so readily grasping the potentialities of this form of bowling, and its peculiar suitability to their matting wickets, at the same time, while one must also admire the great perfection to which they have attained, one must not forget that it is probably the fact that they have these matting wickets to bowl on which has had a good deal to do with the rapid growth and development of the "googly" in South Africa. Bowlers over here have frequently been blamed for their THE TATE CENTRAL LIBRARY PRIXTON, S.W. 47 I Personally, I have had little experience of matting, but have always found it very easy to bowl on, owing to the amount of break one can get on, and the quickness with which the ball leaves the pitch. This applies almost equally to the leg-break and to A B FIG. a. the googly, though the latter frequently comes quicker from the pitch, owing to the amount of overspin imparted to the ball.
In this connection my attention has been called to an article written by Mr. Vaile, who professes to explain how the googly is bowled. In it he attributes the googly to overspin imparted to the ball at the moment of leaving the hand. Now would have thought it sufficiently obvious, even to a lay writer, that a ball to which pure overspin (i.e., a rotary motion in a one B 66 MR. D. W. CARR. lack of enterprise and for being so slow to discover the efficacy of this type of bowling and to master its difficulties, but there is not the least doubt that it is considerably more easy to bowl what is known as a finger-break" in a warm climate and on a matting wicket. The latter is, par excellence, material for the exercise of the " googly merchant's " craft, as the ball not only gets a good grip on the matting, thus enabling it to break to a surprising extent, but it also takes the break and does its work very quickly, and at the same time gets up to a good height. The nearest approach we get to it is a fast wicket that has slightly crumbled," or, in other words, of which the surface has been cut up and broken.
A FIG. b. line from the bowler's hand to the wicket, Fig. a), has been imparted can only continue in the same line of flight after striking the ground, though with an acceleration of speed. This can be the only result of overspin pure and simple, and, unless lateral spin is added, it is impossible for a ball to break, i.e., continue in a different line of flight after pitching, so that we find, so far from the googly being the result of overspin, that where overspin exists it is the result of the googly. Mr. Vaile's article is also illustrated with photographs which, with few exceptions, show the ball rotating on an axis of spin which must infallibly produce a leg and not an off break, which is all that a googly is. The whole point of the dropping of the wrist is quite lost sight of, or not appreciated, and in order to correct the false impressions which may be gleaned from this article, I will endeavour to explain clearly how the googly is bowled.
Everybody knows more or less what an ordinary leg-break is to a right-handed batsman, and how it is obtained by a righthanded bowler. It is almost without exception what is known as a " finger-break," i.e., is obtained by movements of the fingers which impart spin to the ball, and not by any peculiarity of action, these movements vary with every bowler, but the result is the same with every over-arm bowler, viz., the ball leaves the hand rotating from right to left, so (Fig. b). This applies both to right- and left-handed bowlers, and the result in either case is as shown, though the angle of inclination of the axis of spin varies. This result, as you can see, consists of a mixture of overspin with lateral spin from right to left. The ordinary off-break is simply the opposite, viz., overspin with lateral spin from left to right, so (Fig. c).
Now the googly is simply a normal offbreak obtained by abnormal means, i.e., that dropping of the wrist at the moment of [CRICKET prehend. Follow me a little further. We have a ball about to be delivered rotating as in Fig. b, with the axis of the spin thus: /; now, if the axis of spin just at the moment of delivery were changed to \, as in Fig. c, what would be the result?
The ball, instead of leaving the hand spinning over from right to left, would spin from left to right, and would break after pitching in the line of spin, i.e., from left to right, in other words, an ordinary legbreak in embryo has become an "off-break." How has this been done? Simply by dropping the wrist at the last moment so as to change the axis of spin, and to cause the ball to leave over the back of the hand.
There you have the whole story of the googly." This is the secret of its com- 66 FIG. C.
B delivery to which I have referred above.
This is the keynote of the whole matter, and, once it is understood, the whole mystery stands forth plain for all to com- [Photo. by G. W. Beldam.
MR. W. W. ARMSTRONG. LEG-BREAK. position and the method of its delivery, and perhaps when you realise that it is merely an ordinary leg-break metamorphosed into an ordinary off-break at the last moment, you will not be so much afraid of it. The dropping of the wrist is the "sign of the googly," and is the only indication by which the batsman can tell that it is coming, though it is possible at times to notice the direction in which the ball is spinning during its passage through the air; but this is generally only possible with a very slow ball.