The birth of the Bosie

How legspin changed South Africa, and cricket, over a 100 years ago

Here is the transcript of episode two, season one of Double Century. 

Twisti-twosti is a game where someone bounces a ball on a table to make the person at the other end drop it. You have probably played this game before, you just didn't know it had a proper name. It's the sort of thing a couple of kids do when they have a ball inside and nothing else to do. In the mid-1890s a part-time bowler and first class batsman played this game with a friend, and it was during this game that he invented the Bosie. Or wrong'un, or googly. And they've been using it ever since. 

For this episode we're talking about the greatest delivery ever invented, the wrong'un. Of which I will be using the term bosie and googly as well, just because I'm random like that. Just when you think you know which way I'm going, I go a different direction. 

Bernard Bosanquet was the man playing Twisti-twosti over a hundred years ago. He was from the English elite, he went to Eton and then studied at Oxford. His father was the Sherriff of Middlesex. His life sounds wonderful, I am sure his servants farted rainbow milkshakes for him on demand. But the darling little posh boy could bat. In 1900 he made three first class 100s, and could bowl part-time off spin. So he represented Oxford first and then played for Middlesex as an amateur. Plum Warner took Bosanquet to the USA for a tour, another time he toured with Ranji. They selected him for the Gentlemen versus the players. You know, he was a player, well a gentleman, who could bat and bowl. But he wasn't destined for greatness, he was a middling cricketer, who would've had a nice career and probably a fabulous time doing it. But then he had this ball, this magical ball, that went the other way, and that would end up being attached to him for the rest of his life and lead to another country's cricket. 

Overarm bowling was only legalised in 1864, and that was after so many people tried to fight it, just as they had fought round-arm bowling before it. So you can imagine how basic bowling was. Fred Spofforth, really the first true swing bowler, wrote that he didn't really understand how he made the ball swing. Spin and swing were so intertwined at this point that many bowlers were really mixture bowlers. Also the pitches were horrible, they had literal chunks of manure on them, and bowlers just needed to aim at the stumps a lot to get good results. 

There was off spin and leg spin, plus cutter versions of the same. There was swing, but even then some thought it was an optical illusion. The bouncer wasn't much of a thing, the most interesting form of bowling was the lob bowlers who underarmed the ball up high. Bowling was basic, because that was really what was called for. But with liquid manure, look, I'm sorry to keep mentioning this, but when they worked out how to liquefy manure it changed cricket, shit changed cricket, is that what you want to hear. Anyway, people were also working out general pitch science, so the wickets that were shit got better. And bowlers had to think a bit more. 

The ball was really first seen in the nets at Oxford where Bosanquet would drop one into his legspin and watch his teammates look confused. And while it was a deadly ball, he struggled to keep it and his other leg spinners on a good line and length. It wasn't until 1900 that he even started using it regularly. He dismissed the left handed Sam Coe, he was on 98, and the ball bounced four times. It was a joke at the time. 

Considering he had this weapon, his bowling figures in first class cricket are good, not great. Taking around 105 wickets for 23 in 1899/1900 combined, which sound good in today's money, but it was not spectacular in his era. In 1901 he slipped to only take 36 at 37. But by 1903 his all round skills were enough to get him a tour of Australia. He would play seven test over two years. 

When he was dropped, it was because his very good first class batting, 20 hundreds and average of 33, hadn't transferred, and he is top scores in Tests was 27. With the ball he took 25 wickets at 24. But with the very high economy rate of 3.7. His overall figures look good, but he was very hit or miss. He averaged 47 in the first team innings of the match and 18 in the second. And he was treated more like a part-time oddity than a real bowler, despite taking 6/51 at Sydney and 8/107 at Nottingham. He was very such seen as the father of the bosie, but he never mastered his own monster. 

And this was a huge creation. All the balls invented at that point did what you would expect them to do. With swing still being mastered, you could only assume most balls swung early from the hand. Off spin and the off cutter were easy enough to pick, the same as leg spin and the leg cutter. Perhaps the only real wild card was balls that moved off the seam. But with wickets getting better, that was happening less. 

So now imagine in this world of fairly black and white, that the wrong'un was like looking through a kaleidoscope after dropping acid. It looked like one ball, but behaved like another. It went the other damn way; it was a ruse that lead to embarrassment, a party trick that could be used in game situations. 

People thought it was an unfair advantage. In a gentlemanly sport like this, one should tell one's opponent what ball is coming next. In fact, if it hadn't been from a gentleman, it might have been ruled unfair. When Tom Walker bowled round arm at Hambledon in the 1700s he was stopped from doing it. When the amateurs took up the cause it was harder to stop them. And the genius of the googly then, and now, is that it's not like the doosra or flipper, it's a ball many people can deliver, and it still can't always be picked. You could teach this to others, and Bosanquet did. 

The first person to really pick it up was Reggie Schwarz. He was a young batsman from London who went to the prestigious St Pauls school . He and Bosanquet played together for Middlesex, and then shortly after they toured Philadelphia together for cricket. Then Schwarz emigrated to South Africa and was soon one of their better cricketers. On South Africa's England tour of 1904 he met up with Bosanquet who gave him lessons on his invention. 

When Schwarz got back to South Africa, he taught his Transvaal teammates Bert Vogler, Aubrey Faulkner and Gordon White about this new delivery. They all took to it. In first class cricket, only one of these men would average over 20, that was White, at 20.05. The bosie turned non bowlers into stars. 

You think about South Africa as this great proud cricket nation. With a team that before their apartheid ban were about to take cricket by storm, and since then have been one of the best teams in cricket and for a long time the best Test side on earth.

But that isn't the South Africa we are talking about. At this point in their development, they had played five series and their biggest achievement was a draw against an Australian team who played straight off the boat. Despite playing second-string England teams, they had had lost 10 of their first 11 Tests spanning 17 years, and there was little hope of them getting better. So think of them the next time you slag off some developing team for not getting better quicker. 

They also played a lot of their cricket on matting and had never played away from home. England would beat them, sending over players who's only first class match was the test against them. In their first Test England rolled out Charles Aubrey Smith as their captain, he took 5/19, never played another Test and ended up as a Hollywood actor. Basically Ian McKellen beat South Africa in a Test, that's how bad they were. 

In 1905/06 England sent another second-string team to play South Africa. They would play six debutants, neither Jack Hobbs or Syd Barnes played. But still they were playing South Africa, it just wasn't a South Africa who had existed before. 

In the first Test England won the toss and batted, Reggie Schwarz and Aubrey Faulkner opened the bowling. Later Bert Vogler and Gordon White bowled. Faulkner took four wickets, Vogler two. England were bowled out for 184. Sadly, none of South Africa's top five made it to double figures, and the team ended up nine short of a hundred. Faulkner took four more, Vogler another two, and the leg spinners took 12 of England's wickets.

They more than did their job, but South Africa still had to chase 284. In their 22 previous innings, they only scored that many runs once. At 105/6, with Faulkner and Sinclair - their two best batsmen out, but a partnership between Dave Nourse and White put on over a hundred, but when White was out, Vogler and Schwarz were next. And with nine wickets down, South Africa needed 45 runs. Only one other partnership in the match had been over 50 for South Africa. But Percy Sherwell, South Africa's captain and keeper, came in, and he's not a usual number eleven. They put on what might still be south African's most fantastic partnership, and with the scores level Sherwell hit a boundary and with that, South Africa won a Test. 

The next Test the leg spinners took 11 wickets. South Africa won four Tests in the series, they took 95 wickets, their leg spinners took 43 of those at 19. Almost half their wickets. It would be extraordinary if legspin took that many victims in a series in Asia. But for it to happen in South Africa with South African spinners, it's just an amazing story. It wasn't just legspin that disappeared from South Africa; they beat England again in 1910/11, but then didn't win another series until 1930/31. 

It is amazing the power this ball still has, over a hundred years later in a format of the game that wasn't even really a glimmer in cricket's eye, the wrong'un, bosie, googly is now reborn as a T20 weapon. Probably the most important ball In T20 cricket, and to think the good it has done for so many cricketers around the World. 

But Bosanquet had a troubled relationship with it. You see, as often happens in cricket, with the West Indies fast bowlers or Pakistan's reverse swing, this new thing just wasn't cricket. Arthur Shrewsbury and his 59 first class tons said the ball "wasn't fair". AC Maclaren, an England captain who once suggested he wanted to be a dictator of a cricket team, also suggested that the googly would be the end of activeness of batting. Sounds like the old fellas couldn't pick it. But there was certainly a lot anti wrong'un chat at this point. 

By the end of his career, Bosanquet barely bowled his creation. He only delivered 709 balls in his last seven seasons. This is from Bosanquet in the Morning Post newspaper under the heading "The Scapegoat of Cricket":

"Poor old googly! It has been subjected to ridicule, abuse, contempt, incredulity, and survived them all. Deficiencies existing at the present day are attributed to the influence of the googly. If the standard of bowling falls off it is because too many cricketers devote their time to trying to master it... If batsmen display a marked inability to hit the ball on the off-side or anywhere in front of the wicket and stand in apologetic attitudes before the wicket, it is said that the googly has made it impossible for them to attempt the old aggressive attitude and make the scoring strokes.But, after all, what is the googly? It is merely a ball with an ordinary break produced by an extra-ordinary method. It is not difficult to detect, and, once detected, there is no reason why it should not be treated as an ordinary break-back. However, it is not for me to defend it. If I appear too much in the role of the proud parent I ask forgiveness."

You wonder what Bosanquet would have thought to his creation, being the last thing Don Bradman saw in Test cricket. The ball that stopped him averaging 100. 

Bosanquet would have had a great life even if he didn't play cricket, coming from that family, being the man he was. But that might not have been the same for young blokes from Nepal and Afghanistan. We wouldn't have Sandeep Lamichhane or Rashid Khan without his creation. This ball has helped change the cricket for the better, it did it 100 years ago, and it's still doing it now. 

The final episode of season two of Double Century will be released tomorrow.

This was the transcript of a Double Century podcast. It is written and narrated by me, Jarrod Kimber. It's produced by Nick McCorriston. And my fact-checkers were Berti Moores and Abhishek Mukherjee. 

This podcast only exists because of our supporters on Patreon, so if you can afford to help us out there, please do. This is episode two in our first season, please help us by sharing, every social media post helps us, and if you can, please review it.