MCC Permits the Elbow — Roundarm Bowling Halfway Legalised, 1828

The trial matches of June and July 1827 had ended without a clear verdict but with Sussex winning two of the three. The MCC could not afford to take no action, but the conservative element on its committee — led by figures like Lord Frederick Beauclerk — would not accept full legalisation. The elbow-height compromise was the price of agreement.

Through the autumn and winter of 1827 the cricket press argued the case in print. The Sussex faction wanted full legalisation; the MCC's older guard wanted the old law enforced. The committee's draft, circulated in early 1828, picked the line between them.

The 1827 trial matches between Sussex and an England XI had been declared inconclusive but had decisively demonstrated the superiority of Lillywhite and Broadbridge's roundarm bowling. With professional opinion divided, umpires unwilling to enforce the existing law, and the leading county openly defying it, the MCC committee met in 1828 to redraft Rule 10. The amended wording permitted the bowler to raise his hand level with the elbow, but no higher. The phrase 'as high as the elbow' was the first formal acknowledgement that strictly underarm bowling was no longer the only legal style. In practice the new rule was almost immediately ignored: Lillywhite, Broadbridge and a growing number of imitators continued to bowl with the hand at or near shoulder height and umpires did not no-ball them. The 1828 change was therefore both real and pretend — real because it formally acknowledged that the hand could be raised, pretend because the limit it set was already routinely exceeded. The compromise lasted seven years; in 1835 the MCC raised the legal level to the shoulder, and in 1864 the height restriction was abolished altogether.

The 1828 amendment did not stop the spread of roundarm. Within two years the style was the normal mode of fast bowling at top level. The MCC's de facto acceptance of bowlers who exceeded the elbow limit set the precedent that informal practice would always run ahead of the written rule — a pattern that would repeat itself in 1862 and again over the throwing controversies of later eras.