John Willes No-Balled at Lord's — The Roundarm Pioneer's Walkout, July 1822

Willes had been bowling roundarm in Kent club cricket since around 1807. The MCC, increasingly worried by the style's spread, had reaffirmed the underarm law in 1816 and was determined to enforce it. Willes had been called before, including in 1821, but never with such finality.

By 1822 Willes was already a marked man. Lord Frederick Beauclerk and the MCC committee had effectively decided that the next public defiance would be punished. The selectors of the Kent side knew Willes would be called; Willes himself accepted the bowling assignment in full knowledge of what was likely to follow.

Roundarm bowling — the arm extended sideways at or near shoulder height — had been creeping into English cricket since the 1800s, supposedly developed by Willes after watching his sister Christiana bowl with her arm out wide because the wide skirts of the day prevented an underarm action. Willes had been bowling roundarm since the early 1810s, and the MCC, alarmed by the spread of the new style, had explicitly reaffirmed the underarm law in 1816 and again in 1822. On 15 July 1822, in the MCC v Kent fixture at Lord's, Willes opened the bowling and was promptly no-balled. Accounts differ in detail: most agree he hurled the ball away, stalked off, mounted the horse he had hitched outside the ground, and rode off down the St John's Wood Road declaring he was finished with cricket. He was 44 years old, a Kentish farmer of independent means, and as good as his word — he never appeared in another match of importance. The episode demonstrated that the MCC could enforce the underarm law if it chose, but the Sussex bowlers Lillywhite and Broadbridge had already begun to push the same boundary; within five years they would force the trial matches that would lead to roundarm being legalised in 1828.

“He threw down the ball in high dudgeon and, mounting his horse, rode away from Lord's, vowing he would never play again — and he never did.”

Willes returned to his Kent farm and lived another quarter-century in retirement from the first-class game. His sister Christiana, the supposed inventor of the roundarm action, was widely credited in folk memory. The MCC's enforcement of the law in 1822 did not stop the spread of roundarm; if anything the public drama hardened the determination of the Sussex bowlers, who within five years had forced a formal trial.