On England's 1903-04 tour of Australia, Bernard Bosanquet bowled what he himself called the first googly delivered in Australia, dismissing Victor Trumper. The new delivery — a leg-break action producing an off-break — would within a decade reshape spin bowling worldwide. Bosanquet's 6 for 51 in the fourth Test at Sydney sealed the Ashes for Plum Warner's England.
Bosanquet, the son of a Persian scholar and a French-Italian mother, was an unusual figure in English cricket. He was a fine fast-medium bowler at Oxford before he developed the googly; he had also represented Oxford at hammer-throwing and football. The 'bosie' was named almost immediately after him by Australian crowds, and the term is still used in Australian cricket vocabulary.
He took some time to control the delivery. In the 1902 Ashes he was not selected; by 1903 his county form was strong enough to win him a tour place under Plum Warner.
Warner's MCC tour was the first under official MCC auspices. Bosanquet's selection was controversial; he had taken 63 wickets in 1903 at 21 each but was thought too erratic. Warner, who had been Bosanquet's Oxford captain, backed him.
Bernard James Tindal Bosanquet, a Middlesex amateur educated at Eton and Oxford, had spent years working on a delivery he called 'the bosie' — a ball delivered with an apparent leg-break action but, by twisting the wrist over at the last moment, spinning the other way. He worked on the technique using a tennis ball on a billiards table, refining it through the late 1890s.
Bosanquet first used it in first-class cricket around 1900, but it was the 1903-04 Ashes tour to Australia that gave it a public stage. In the first Test at Sydney, he bowled Trumper with a delivery that swerved in, pitched on a length, and hit the off stump — Bosanquet later said it was the first true googly bowled in Australia. By the fourth Test at Sydney, he took six for 51 in the second innings, bowling England to a 157-run win and securing the Ashes.
The googly transformed slow bowling. Reggie Schwarz, an Englishman playing club cricket with Bosanquet at Middlesex, learned the technique and took it back to South Africa. Within four years (by the 1907 SA tour of England) South Africa had four wrist-spinners — Schwarz, Aubrey Faulkner, Gordon White and Bert Vogler — all using the googly, and the team's bowling identity changed accordingly.
Bosanquet bowls Trumper with the first googly in Australia, 1st Test, Sydney.
England win 1st Test by 5 wickets — RE Foster 287 the other story.
4th Test, Sydney: Bosanquet 6 for 51 in second innings.
England win by 157 runs and regain the Ashes.
Schwarz, in England, learns the technique and exports it to South Africa.
By 1907, four South Africans bowl the googly in Test cricket.
Bosanquet's career-best 8 for 107 against Australia at Trent Bridge in 1905.
Late 1890s
Bosanquet experiments with the delivery on a billiards table.
1900
First used in a first-class match (Middlesex v Leicestershire).
1903
63 first-class wickets win him a place on Warner's MCC tour.
11 Dec 1903
Bowls Trumper with 'first googly in Australia', SCG.
Feb-Mar 1904
6 for 51 at Sydney 4th Test secures the Ashes.
1905
8 for 107 at Trent Bridge against Australia.
1907
South Africa's googly quartet tours England.
“It is not unfair, only immoral.”
“Bosanquet bowled with great success, frequently puzzling the batsmen.”
Bosanquet's Test career was short — only seven matches, 25 wickets at 24.16 — but his impact was incalculable. He retired from regular county cricket by 1908 and devoted himself to writing and business. His son Reginald became a famous television newsreader in Britain in the 1970s.
In Australia, Bosanquet is sometimes credited (or blamed) for the long line of leg-spin and wrist-spin bowlers, from Mailey through O'Reilly to Benaud and Warne, all of whom used the wrong'un — a direct descendant of the original 'bosie'.
An innovation that shaped the next century of spin bowling. Bosanquet himself bowled it inconsistently and was as likely to concede 80 in an innings as take six wickets, but the principle — that a wrist-spinner could spin the ball both ways from the same action — has been a constant of cricket since.
The googly remained Bosanquet's principal legacy. The South Africans' adoption of it within four years showed how quickly a new technique could spread; the eventual standard of wrist-spin bowling, with two opposed deliveries from the same action, was set in 1903.
Bosanquet himself was modest about the achievement. He once wrote, 'It is not unfair, only immoral.' He died in 1936, by which time the googly had become a standard part of Test bowling worldwide.
Yorkshire v Essex
1932-06-16
On 15-16 June 1932 Herbert Sutcliffe (313) and Percy Holmes (224*) put on 555 for the first wicket against Essex at Leyton, breaking the world first-class record for any wicket and adding a layer of folklore — including a scoreboard that read 554 for several minutes and a hastily reversed declaration — that has clung to the partnership ever since.
Australia v England
1933-02-14
With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.