Round arm bowling in cricket

Posted on July 26, 2009
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Round arm bowling in the 80s

Round arm bowling at the starting of 80s

In cricket,round arm bowling was introduced early in the 19th century.However it was found only rare nowadays after the legalisation of overarm bowling.It was said that Tom Walker of England was the first to introduce this kind of bowling.Walker bowled the deliveries with his arm away from the body which helped him a lot to generate extra pace and variations in the deliveries.

John Willes is very keen to bowl deliveries in the round-arm action but the, then stringent cricket laws prevented him from bowling in round-arm action.Cricket laws in the year 1816 says that the ball should be delivered under the elbow.The bowler must not throw the ball at the time of delivering the ball and no part of the hand should be above the elbow.If any one who bowls so,the umpire has the right to call “no ball”.These strong rules made the then cricketers very difficult to bowl in the round-arm action and most of them stuck to the conventional under-arm bowling.

In 1828 MCC(Marylebone Cricket Club) modified the rule 10 which permits the bowlers to raise the hand as high as the elbow as they wish.In 1835 MCC finally amended the Laws of Cricket to make the round arm bowling legal which says that the hand should not be above the shoulders and if so the umpire can call “No Ball”.The law was again reinforced in 1845 by removing benefit of the doubt from the bowler in the matter of his hand’s height when delivering the ball.

Lasith Malinga's unorthodox round arm bowling action

Lasith Malinga's unorthodox round arm bowling action

The prominent round arm bowlers in the  later part of 80s were Lillywhite,
Broadbridge,Alfred Mynn,John Jackson and W G Grace .The modern common type of bowling is overarm bowling.In the modern game,one of the most successful round arm bowler is Sri Lanka’s Lasith Malinga.This has earned him the name “Slinger Malinga”

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