Published: Jul 20, 2016, 05:16 PM (IST)
Edited: Jul 20, 2016, 05:18 PM (IST)
Gerald Brodribb, in his excellent tome Next Man In, cites the example of a First-Class match of 1827 in which, to all intents and purposes, a great travesty of justice had taken place on the part of the umpires. Before embarking on the actual story of the game, a little background of the cricket scene around that time may be in order.
As has been mentioned in these pages earlier, this was an unsettled time for cricket in England, with the debate surrounding the legality of round-arm bowling gradually reaching a crescendo in the land and giving rise to high feeling on the issue, both for and against. In an effort to bring some semblance of order into the decision process, a series of 3 matches had been arranged between Sussex (who had the 2 most prominent purveyors of the disputed bowling style, William Lillywhite and James ‘Jem’ Broadbridge, in their ranks), and a representative team to be called England.
Mr Bob Harragan, in his very educative article Kingscote and Gloucestershire Cricket, gives us a fairly lucid picture of the happenings of the time. He speaks of one Henry Kingscote, a prominent member of an illustrious family of Gloucestershire of that name, and a member of the eponymous Kingscote Club. It seems that this Kingscote had been elected President of MCC in 1824, at the unbelievably young age of 24, and had set about trying to change the basic structure of cricket to make it more in keeping with the changing times: “Reading between the lines, it seems there was a sweeping away of the old order at Lord’s around this time, and he was one of the first of a series of vigorous young presidents.”
The brothers Kingscote seem to have been deeply involved the gradual process of switching from the prevalent under-arm to the newer concept of round-arm bowling. It was said that Kingscote had been named as “the maker of the match”, referring to the set of 3 ‘trial’ games to be played for a purse of 1,000 guineas. The conditions laid down for these games was that Lillywhite and Broadbridge of Sussex would be allowed to bowl in their preferred round-arm style whilst the England (or All-England) bowlers would bowl under-arm.
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We speak here of the 3rd of those matches, played at Brighton, starting July 23, 1827, after a compromise had been reached and those players protesting against the new style of bowling after the first 2 matches were completed, had been suitably appeased.
England had taken first strike, and had been dismissed for a miserable 27. No one reached double-figures, and one Edward Budd top-scored with 8. For Sussex, the round-arm duo of Lillywhite (3 wickets) and Broadbridge (2 wickets) had then accounted for half the side. It should be mentioned here that there was one run out in the innings but the names of the dismissing bowlers were not available for 4 of the wickets that fell.
Sussex did not do much better in their 1stinnings, being dismissed for 77 but taking a vital 50-runs lead. For Sussex, George Brown (24) and William Broadbridge (18), brother of James, were the only ones in double figures.
England did much better in the 2ndinnings, posting a total of 169, James Saunders scoring 44. Since the scorecards of the time were rather vague (in case of catches or stumpings, the fielder’s or wicketkeeper’s name featured on the scorecard instead of the bowler’s), 5 of the wicket-taking bowlers are not named.
The drama was played out in the Sussex 2nd innings of 95.
Broadbridge was declared out under extremely extenuating circumstances. Here is what happened: a delivery from had been so wide that Broadbridge had felt compelled to literally throw his bat at it.
Having made contact with the thrown bat, the ball “mounted in the air and was caught by Mr. Ward at point” (from a contemporary newspaper report). One may be left wondering how a practitioner of underarm bowling could deliver a ball so wide as to warrant the afore-said response from the batsman.
After the confusion arising from this very unusual incident had died down somewhat, one of the umpires (not named in the match report), gave Broadbridge out following a prolonged palaver. Broadbridge left the field very reluctantly. England won this contentious game by 24 runs.
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The incident outlined above gives rise to some interesting issues:
1. Can a man be given out caught when the bat has hit the ball at a time when the bat was not in contact with the hand?
2. Had the umpire called a ‘wide ball’ for a delivery that was so far from the batsman that he had felt it necessary to throw his bat at it? In the confusion that followed immediately after the incident and in the debate that ensued, no one was sure about this ‘wide ball’ situation. To be fair, there is no record of whether the delivery had been called a ‘wide’.
3. This is the most intriguing point. If, indeed, the umpire had called a ‘wide’ and the call had gone unnoticed in the fracas, Broadbridge would have gone down in the annals of first class cricket as the only man to have ever been given out caught off a ‘wide ball’ — the prospect is too deliciously intriguing.
I leave it to the judgement of the well-informed readers to form their own individual opinions on the issues mentioned above.
Brief scores:
England 27 (William Lillywhite 3+ wickets, James Broadbridge 2+ wickets) and 169 (James Saunders 44, Henry Kingscote 31) beat Sussex 77 (Edward Budd 2+ wickets) and 95 (George Knight 2+ wickets) by 24 runs.
(Pradip Dhole is a retired medical practitioner with a life-long interest in cricket history and statistics)
