William Clarke, born December 24, 1798, was the greatest of the lob bowlers. But, that was just a fraction of his contribution to the cause of cricket. The game as we know it today almost certainly would not have existed but for the innovative brilliance of this visionary. Arunabha Sengupta looks back at the life and career of this remarkable man.
A multi-faceted genius
It is a near futile exercise to reconstruct William Clarke using the units of modern times. No, we have to go back at least a few decades and still come up short.
Take Jim Laker. Merge him with Kerry Packer. The greatest slow bowler along with the entrepreneur who changed the face of cricket forever. And in that curious conglomerate we can decipher some traces of what Clarke would have been like. But, then again, Laker bowled off-breaks, not a method of bowling that was obsolete. Clarke bowled lobs when the standard way of bowling was round-arm.
Yet, no principal batsman of Laker’s time did pen a book on how to play him. They did not do it for any bowler, not even Fred Spofforth or Syd Barnes or Shane Warne. Yet, Nicholas Felix did so on the subject of dealing with Clarke’s lobs, a book named How to Play Clarke. The only time one of the greatest cricketers of the day devoted an entire book on the ways of combating the skills of a rival.
When we consider that neither Harold Larwood, nor Hedley Verity, nor Alec Bedser ever thought of writing How to Bowl to Don Bradman, we manage to put the fact in some sort of context.
But then, Felix had good reasons. Perhaps the seeds were sown and even the pulp sprouted fast and sure on July 17, 1845, when Nottinghamshire faced Kent at Trent Bridge.
It was a mighty Kent side, filled to the brim with giants of the willow and leather. Fuller Pilch in his top hat, the massive form of Alfred Mynn, and the scientific genius of Felix himself.
Of course, they knew the man with his feet firmly planted in middle age, the landlord of the adjoining Trent Bridge Inn, the one who had been a key figure in organising the matches at that pay-to-view ground for the last few years. They had played him before.
When they had first met, Felix had run out and attacked the slow bowling to score a masterly 54. Hence, the next time they met, Felix sauntered in to bat with accompanying cries of “Here comes Clarke’s master.” But, Clarke remembered the tactics of the great batsman. Indeed, he could read the minds of all who faced him. Felix advanced down the wicket, and Clarke lobbed the ball over his head and bowled him.
Felix had never quite mastered him after that. The three great batsmen knew of his cunning. But, on that July day Clarke was 46. Was he still good?
The answer was provided on that morning. Pilch managed to score 7 before he was stumped. Mynn was bowled for a duck. So was Felix. The three greatest batsmen of that age dismissed within a few minutes. Kent all out for 65. Clarke had 9 for 29.
In the second innings, Pilch managed to remain unbeaten on 29. Mynn was bowled by Clarke for 4. Felix, his scientific mind working out that Clarke had worked out his forward play, decided to play back. He was hit wicket off the master-bowler for 13. Kent 86 all out and Clarke 7 for 40. And then George Parr hit the winning runs as Notts triumphed by 8 wickets.
Yes, Felix had his reasons for writing the book on Clarke. And although it was published when Clarke was 53, it was timely enough. Because this elderly, one-eyed, old-fashioned lob bowler had just started out on his greatest period.
The year following his great success against Kent, Clarke moved south and joined MCC as bowling staff. The same year, 1846, he made his first appearance for the Players against the Gentlemen and scalped 5 for 30 in the first innings. In 1847, Clarke bowled in tandem with the other great bowler of his era, William Lillywhite, the round-arm champion, and skittled the Gentlemen for 79 and 48. He played the key fixture every year, from 1846 to 1853, capturing 50 wickets in the 8 matches. They were as big as Test matches back then.
It is perhaps correct to say that Clarke matured as a bowler, from a great one to perhaps one of the greatest of all time, in his late 40s. Between 1848 and 1854, in all forms of cricket, Clarke picked up 2,327 wickets, his biggest haul being 476 in 1854, at the age of 55. Many of these were in odds matches, but Clarke’s performance did not vary much when the action shifted to the First-Class field.
And it was in 1846 that Clarke started out with the innovations that would change the face of cricket forever.
He broke the bastion of MCC, that very elite and exclusive of institutions where he served as ground-staff. He collected the best cricketers of his times to form the All-England XI
Clarke was the captain, manager, agent, leading bowler, talent-spotter and the impresario of this travelling group of excellent performers who took cricket from the limited exclusivity of Lord’s and London and spread it around Britain to build it into a national sport. He spread it to every part of Britain, to Glasgow and Edinburgh in the north; Norwich, Ipswich and Chelmsford in the east; Brighton, Chichester, Weymouth, Torquay in the south and Cardiff and Liverpool in the west.
It was this All-England XI that showed the way cricketing ties could be fostered. Clarke the visionary rode on the Reform Act and the Municipal Corporations Act that shifted power from the gentry in favour of the commercial class, took advantage of the newly developed technology of the Railways, and made cricket a sport of travel and tours.
After Clarke’s death, the All-England XI took to the seas, visiting far-off Australia. It was this idea that was sown into the minds of the Australian cricketing entrepreneurs who went on to start their own cricketing-financial touring projects, that went on to create cricketing ties between England and Australia and thereby brought forth the concept of Test matches.
But for Clarke and his farsighted vision, cricket could have been limited to a private club game for the members of the exclusive MCC, with some limited action elsewhere.
In the interim, Clarke took 2,382 wickets for All-England XI.
Yet, for all his trendsetting modern way of thought, Clarke was an outdated enigma. In an era when there was a flood of round-arm bowlers breaking new boundaries in cricket, especially after the legislation of 1827, he stuck to old-fashioned underarm lobs.
He had learned the tricks of the trade from Sam Warsop, the old Nottinghamshire bowler, and the great William Lambert. And he continued to bowl in that same manner, impervious to the bowling revolution taking place around him.
There are some who argue that this is why he was seldom known outside his county. His first appearance at Lord’s was for North against South in 1836, and he was already 38. His next game at the hallowed headquarters of cricket was at the age of 43. But, there are others who are of the opinion that his lob bowling stood him in good stead. He bowled in the era of round-arm bowlers, when the skills required to play old-fashioned lobs were almost forgotten. That allowed him to take wickets by the bushel.
It may be true. But there was more than that contributing to Clarke’s success. As we will see about the man and his methods, he was a genius in more ways than one.
An anachronistic bowler
The son of a cricket-loving bricklayer, Clarke first features on a scorecard during the infamous England XI vs Nottinghamshire XXII match of 1817. Clarke would have been 18 then and does not seem to have bowled in the game.
Arranged by George ‘The Squire’ Osbaldeston and Joe Dennis, the match saw Lord Frederick Beauclerk leading England and was tainted by fixing accusations. Beauclerk was not amused with this game, his feud with Osbaldeston was fuelled and he banned Lambert from playing at Lord’s. Lambert lasted only one more year in serious cricket.
Clarke scored 1 and 0 and was bowled in the first innings by Lambert. Later he acknowledged that much of his bowling methods were modelled on the great professional.
Those days Clarke was a slim young man standing at 5 feet 9 inches, who had trained to join his father in his profession as a bricklayer. The following February, after that infamous match, he married Jane Wigley. By virtue of matrimony, he took over as the innkeeper of The Bell, Angel Row, Nottingham, previously owned by Katherine Wigley, mother of Jane.
During those years, Clarke was also extremely enthusiastic about the sport of Fives. He was a decent batsman as well. There are records of him taking part, quite successfully, in single-wicket games. One had to be an all-rounder to be successful in this variety of the game.
It was the loss of his right eye through an accident at Fives which diminished his abilities as a batsman. As his protégé George Parr, remarked, “He later batted by sound rather than sight.” However, it did not have any effect on his bowling. From the mid-1820s we see him featuring more as a bowler in the scorebooks.
In the1820s the tussle for legalisation of round-arm was taking place in England. In spite of the objections raised by the likes of William Ward, and legislation in favour of underarm, men like John Willes and George T Knight experimented with round-arm. Things were not helped by men like Beauclerk, who accepted the bowling of Willes when he was in the same team as he, and objected otherwise.
Willes snapped in the match between MCC and Kent at Lord’s in July 1822, when he played for Kent and Beauclerk for MCC. No balled several times, he leapt on his horse and stormed off the ground. According to Harry Altham, “He jumped on his horse and rode away out of Lord’s and out of cricket history.”
However, Knight and others continued to bowl round-arm and in 1827 three trial matches were organised to test the new method of bowling. William Lillywhite and James Broadbridge bowled round-arm for Sussex while Knight bowled round-arm for England.
The law was tinkered with, but more and more round-arm bowlers ignored the stipulations. No-balls generally led to drastic action, and many umpires were in favour of more scope for bowlers. In 1835, a change was made to the law that stated that the bowler could raise his arm as high as the shoulder level at the point of delivery.
Mynn, the great all-rounder, picked up round-arm as well. More and more bowlers followed suit.
Strangely, it was now, in his 30s, that Clarke started developing bowling as his main skill. And even more strangely, he was wedded to a style of bowling that was on its way out when he was still a youth.
The methods
Here is how Richard Daft describes Clarke the bowler:
“His delivery was a peculiar one. He came up to the crease with the usual trot which normally all slow under-hand bowlers adopt, but instead of delivering the ball from the height of the hip, he at the last moment bent back his elbow, bringing the ball almost under his right arm put and delivered the ball thus from as great a height as it was possible to attain and still be under-hand. He was by this delivery able to make the ball get up higher than he would have done if he had delivered in the same way as other lob bowlers. I have often heard old cricketers say that they have received many balls from Clarke which got up quite nasty from the field with a lot of screw on them. He seldom bowled two balls alike and could vary his pace and pitch in a wonderful manner.”
William Caffyn, the great all-rounder who saw Clarke near the end of his career, added:
“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 the 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 does 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.”
It was actually more than that. Clarke could detect the batsman’s peculiarities far more astutely than the other way around.
We have already covered the way he overcame Felix. The other great batsman of his time, Pilch, was not impressed when told about Clarke’s revival of lob bowling. He is said to have commented, “Gentlemen, I think you might put me in on Monday morning, and get me out by about Saturday night.” After having faced Clarke, he changed his tune altogether. Pilch, in fact, played Clarke better than anyone else. But, he never mastered him.
General field for William Clarke’s bowling. Photo courtesy: Seventy-One Not Out, William Caffyn.
Clarke himself was extremely analytical in his own methods.
“My success depends not on what is called good length, but on the exact pitch, the one blind spot, according to the reach and style of the player. Also, I can vary the pace without betraying the change by my action … Bowling consists of two parts; there is the mechanical part and the intellectual part. First, you want the hand to pitch where you please; and then the head to know where to pitch, according to the player.”
Clarke had a habit of walking round the ground before the start of play, watching the opposition batsmen practising. Joseph McCormick, later captain of Cambridge University, had this story to relate about his encounter while playing for St Helens against All-England XI in 1853:
“I was practising when Clarke came walking round the ground with the ball in his hand. After watching me for a little while, he said, ‘May I bowl you a ball or two?’ Of course, I was delighted at the favour. But, alas! I did not know his object was to demonstrate my own weaknesses. What happened? Old Clarke had evidently noticed that I was no slogger, but hit hard and low. The first ball he pitched to me well up, and I drove it for two. He then brought in George Anderson to 20 yards behind him, and bowled a similar ball and I hit it hard and straight into the Yorkshireman’s hand. That was about as neat a bit of generalship on Clarke’s part as any tactician could have exhibited.
While travelling with the All-England sides, Clarke would size up the opposition with his walks round the ground. According to Felix, “Clarke would observe to me, ‘I have summed them up. They are worth (so many) an innings. I have noted three or four pretty hitters where they understand the bowling, but they are as good as ready money to me.’ Clarke’s judgement in these cases was remarkable. The certainty with which he would place his men ad play for a catch has been remarked by all who knew him.”
Clarke himself said, “Before you bowl to a man, it is worth something to know what is running in his head.” He would point to batsmen and say, “That gentleman is too fast on his feet. So, as good as ready-money to me. If he doesn’t hit, he can’t score, if he does I shall have him directly.”
Clarke also preached that batsmen should be made to play forward. “Whatever you do, mind you never let them play you back. Every man’s forward play is a little weak, so every man ought to be driven on to it.”
He was a great advocate of the curves managed by slow bowling. He picked up his end to bowl with care, so that the slope helped him, especially at Lord’s. And he controlled his twist, so that the ball would not turn so much to enable the batsman to hit him. A malformation of his arm also helped his twist. His balls spun from leg to off.
Master tactician, Clarke also possessed a strict, if somewhat weird, self-discipline when it came to the diet during games. As FS Ashley-Cooper recounts, “He used to take for lunch when playing cricket a cigar and a bottle of soda water, which he declared were most satisfying with no after-effects of indigestion. His evening meal did not favour so Spartan a plan, for he enjoyed nothing more than a Michaelmas goose. When one was obtainable he would dine alone and the sitting would be prolonged until little more than the bare bones of the bird remained.”
The marital row that changed cricket forever
In 1837, Clarke’s wife Jane died and was buried in St Nicholas Church in Nottingham.
On December 5 of the same year, Clarke married Mary Chapman, a widow about ten years older than him and the proprietor of the Trent Bridge Inn.
For the first few years, Clarke did experiment with holding matches at the fenced Trent Bridge ground. Major matches were held and with England coming out of recession, there were enthusiasts ready to spend money for the sake of cricket.
However, it is a misconception that Clarke made cricket at Trent Bridge a success. According to the scholarly biography penned by the indefatigable Peter Wynne-Thomas, Clarke’s second marriage was unsuccessful. It was the constant rows with his wife that finally made the bowler capitalise on his recent successes and move to MCC as a member of their bowling staff. Mary Clarke changed her name back to Mary Chapman and started living with her son John in Gainsborough.
Had the marriage been happy, the history of cricket would have been a lot different.
All-England XI
Already known as Old Clarke, the master bowler moved to London. MCC had already assumed control over the Laws of the game. They did employ 12 professional cricketers, Clarke one of them. But their members included a Duke, two Marquesses, a handful of Earls, Baronets and numerous Honourables.
MCC held the University matches, inter-public-school matches and the all-important Gentlemen vs Players matches at Lord’s. The club and the ground governed and virtually ruled cricket.
And having joined the ground staff, and in the process of starting out on a long tenure of service for them, Clarke formed the All-England XI. He recruited the star players of the country and organised the team as a travelling circus, visiting cities, towns and villages all over the land, where young hopefuls turned up in hordes to play them.
As Wynne-Thomas writes, “Clarke broke through the MCC stranglehold on pukka cricket and made the sport a truly national game. He enabled the general public to see the great players of the time, and a lucky few of each locality, usually 22 young hopefuls, could actually test their cricketing ability against England’s best. Local newspapers gave extensive coverage to these All-England matches, so even those who were unable to see the cricket itself could read about it.”
They were the best cricketers.
Pilch was there, so was Mynn. The latter was distinctly over the hill, but Clarke, with his one good eye focused on public appetite, knew that his reputation would draw huge crowds.
There was Joseph Guy, described by Daft as the most stylish of batsmen after Pilch. The great round-arm bowler William Hillyer was there, with the able William Martingell for support. There was the solid James Dean at the top of the line-up, and the useful George Butler. Old Tom Sewell was there too, as well as poor William Dorrinton, who would die due to a cold caught during the travels of All-England XI.
The Eleven started their tours with a three-day match against a Sheffield XX, played in front of the largest gathering of spectators. They lost the game, but left by train to Manchester for their next fixture against a local XVIII. Pilch scored 62, Hillyer, Mynn and Dean shared the wickets and All-England XI won by 228 runs. A band of the 69th Regiment of Infantry played during the intervals and at close of play. Then along the men went to Yorkshire.
The All-England Eleven in 1847. From left: Joe Guy, George Parr, Will Martingell, Alfred Mynn, William Denison, Jemmy Dean, William Clarke, Nicholas Felix, Oliver Pell, William Hillyer, William Lillywhite, William Dorrinton, Fuller Pilch, Tom Sewell. Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Thus started their saga. In 1847, Clarke extended the fixtures and the list of players. John Wisden, ‘The Little Wonder’, joined their ranks, bowling incredibly fast for a man of his puny frame. And along came Old Lillywhite with his round-arm bowling greatness. The next great name to join was Felix himself. And walking into the side was also George Parr, the successor of Pilch as batsman and eventually of Clarke as the captain of All-England XI.
Soon, All-England XI were arranging and playing way more matches than MCC. Clarke, tireless, organised, led and bowled through the matches.
By 1849, the fixtures were extended to 21 matches of which the Eleven won 14 and lost only 2. Notable recruits joined, such as Thomas Box the wicketkeeper and Alfred Diver the master occupier of his crease.
In 1850, 24 matches were contested, including four important non-odds games. Some of the stars were aging, such as Mynn and Lillywhite. But Clarke had his eye on the lookout for new talent.
Caffyn, the rising Surrey crack, joined in 1850 before becoming a regular from 1851. In 1851 George Anderson was spotted by Clarke’s experienced eye. The same year saw another sterling recruit in Julius Caesar. There was James Grundy as well, joining in 1851, almost as good an all-rounder as Caffyn. And Thomas Lockyer, the hard-hitting batsman and prince among wicketkeepers. And that same year, the Eleven played as many as 34 matches.
Clarke the tyrant
But by 1852, storm clouds were brewing. Clarke was getting old. His bowling did not really suffer, but he was carrying an injured arm. And some professionals, notably Wisden and Dean, were not happy with their contracts.
A parallel XI was formed named United All-England Eleven and they arranged to contest matches with the same opponents All-England Eleven were playing.
Clarke tried to broker peace with Dean and Wisden, but what transpired between them is not known. On September 7, 1852, a meeting was held at the Adelphi Hotel. It was resolved that Dean, Wisden, Grundy, Lockyer and several others would never play for or against any team which was managed by Clarke.
Clarke was facing problems at another end as well. In the end of the year columns of Bell’s Life a lengthy contribution was made by ‘A Lover of Cricket’ who attacked the AEE for mismanagement, players resting on their laurels and payment irregularities.
Pilch called it sickly childish prattle, Felix defended Clarke stoutly and the Clarke himself resorted to statistics and sarcasm to rubbish the claims of ‘A Lover of Cricket’. In retrospect, historians are almost united in agreeing that the writer was a Charles George Merewether, QC.
In retrospect, it was Clarke’s rather tyrannical handling of the All-England XI that had led to the revolt of the players. He had done immense service to cricket and its future, but he had been a stickler for rules, especially when it came to pay. He paid more than MCC and more often. But, he himself made a good deal out of the enterprise, and some of the players were rather justified in thinking that they should be getting a better deal.
Besides, by increasing the number of matches each year, he was creating a degree of demand on the cricketers that was not possible for one team to satisfy.
Clarke did have his idiosyncrasies. Once asked by a young hopeful how to become a cricketer, he had replied, “Cut your nails first.” And then there was the story when he was asked to put out his cigar by a railway official while riding in a non-smoking carriage. Clarke refused at first and then, when pressed, extinguished it on the hand of the official.
He could be a jerk sometimes.
The last days
The Elevens of England started co-existing and playing matches while studiously ignoring each other. Clarke continued to lead the side, while also participating in First-Class matches in between. His son Alfred Clarke had become a member of the AEE as a stylish batsman.
It was while touring with AEE in 1854 that Clarke arrived in Bristol for the match against XXII of West Gloucestershire. He did not take part due to bad eyes, but he was impressed by the fielding of 13-year-old EM Grace’s fielding at long-stop. He presented EM with a bat and Martha, the mother of WG and EM, with a copy of William Bolland’s Cricket Notes.
In 1855, Clarke played his final First-Class game, a North vs South encounter at Lord’s, Wisden, Willsher, Dean and Stephenson bowled for South, but Clarke’s 11 wickets gave North a close victory. He ended with 797 wickets in First-Class cricket at an average just below 11. However, there may be many more wickets not recorded due to the limitations of scorekeeping in the early days. Besides, of his 2,382 wickets for All-England XI, only 124 qualify as having been taken in First-Class matches.
In 1856 Clarke’s health failed. He played once for All-England Eleven, against Whitehaven, and picked up a wicket with the last ball he ever bowled. That was at the age of 57. In order to obtain some relief from his ailments, Clarke travelled to the spa town of Askern. He stayed there for four weeks, but it did not help him recover. He moved to London, to Priory Lodge, Wandsworth Road, Kennington, some 15 minutes on foot from The Oval. Here he passed away on August 25, 1856. The cause of death was put down as paraplegia.
The same day, All-England Eleven began a match at Loughsborough. On hearing about his father’s condition, Alfred left the game. However, he arrived in London too late to see his father.
The pioneer in cricket in many ways, the keeper of the old flame in his own style of play, this man of contradictions played the game till his last year on earth.
It was after his death that Parr took over the duties of captain-manager of All-England Eleven and continued to spread the game to the distant corners of England, and soon, the world.
There may have been men who have come close in their contribution to the game of cricket. But no one served cricket in all the roles and changed it as much as The Old General, William Clarke.