I avoid books like that for a reason.
John Nyren on William Lamborn, taken from his unassailable classic of cricket,
The Young Cricketers Tutor:
"The tenth knight of our round table (of which old Richard Nyren was the King Arthur), was a man we always called 'The Little Farmer'; his name was Lamborn. William Lamborn. He was a bowler - right-handed, and he had the most extraordinary delivery I ever saw. The ball was delivered quite low, and with a twist; not like that of the generality of right-handed bowlers, but just the reverse way: that is, if bowling to a right-handed hitter, his ball would twist from the leg-stump into the off. He was the first I remember who introduced this deceitful and teasing style of delivering the ball. When all England played the Hambledon Club, the Little Farmer was appointed one of our bowlers, and, egad! this new trick of his so bothered the Kent and Surrey men, that they tumbled one after another, as if they had been picked off by rifle corps. For a long time they could not tell what to make of that cursed twist of his. This, however, was the only virtue he possessed, as a cricketer. He was no batter, and had no judgement of the game. The perfection he had attained in this one department, and his otherwise general deficiency, are at once accounted for by the circumstance, that when he was tending his father's sheep, he would set up a hurdle or two, and bowl away for hours together. Our General, old Nyren, after a great deal of trouble (for the Farmer's comprehension did not equal the speed of lightning), got him to pitch the ball a little to the leg-side of the wicket, when it would twist full in upon the stumps. Before he had got into this knack, he was once bowling againt the Duke of Dorset, and, delivering his ball straight to the wicket, it curled in, and missed the Duke's leg-stump by a hair's-breadth. The plain-spoken little bumpkin, in his eagerness and delight, and forgetting the style in which we were always accustomed to impress our aristocratical playmates with our acknowledgement of their rank and station, bowled out - 'Ah! it was
tedious near you, Sir!' The familiarity of his tone, and the genuine Hampshire dialect in which it was spoken, set the whole ground laughing. I have never seen but one
bowler who delivered his balls in the same way as our Little Farmer; with the
jerkers this practise is not uncommon. He was a very civil and inoffensive young fellow, and remained in the club perhaps two or three seasons."
