Franklyn Stephenson’s throaty chuckle rolls down the phone line. “You know the hardest thing about bowling that ball? I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw how the batsmen were trying to play it! They’d be jabbing here or ducking there, most of them were so clueless!”
Since the earliest days of cricket, bowlers have bamboozled batters with deceptive changes of pace. You can picture those old tricksters now, flannelled and moustachioed, deploying an assortment of sky-high lobs and skiddy, scudding deliveries with a glint in the eye, wreaking havoc on the wealds and downs of southern England.
