Alfred Shaw
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 England (Eng) |
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| Batting style | Right hand bat | |
| Bowling type | Right arm slow | |
| Tests | First-class | |
| Matches | 7 | 404 |
| Runs scored | 111 | 6585 |
| Batting average | 10.09 | 12.44 |
| 100s/50s | 0/0 | 0/12 |
| Top score | 40 | 88 |
| Balls bowled | 1096 | 101997 |
| Wickets | 12 | 2027 |
| Bowling average | 23.75 | 12.13 |
| 5 wickets in innings | 1 | 176 |
| 10 wickets in match | 0 | 44 |
| Best bowling | 5/38 | 10/73 |
| Catches/stumpings | 4/0 | 368/0 |
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Test debut: 15 March 1877 |
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Alfred Shaw (Burton Joyce Nottinghamshire, 29 August 1842 – 16 January 1907 in Gedling, Nottinghamshire) was an eminent Victorian cricketer. He made two trips to North America and four to Australia, captaining the English cricket team in four Test matches on the all-professional tour of Australia in 1881/82, where his side lost and drew two each. He was also, along with James Lillywhite and Arthur Shrewsbury, co-promoter of the tour.
Shaw was one of the few cricketers of his time whose Christian name was used more frequently than his initials. Standing only 5'6½" tall, he put on copious weight near the end of his career, when his naturally corpulent build was dramatically accentuated. It is unfortunate, therefore, that most photographs of him were taken so late in his cricketing life. A man of droopy aspect, bushed eyes, some classically Victorian facial hair and a belt nearer his breast than his substantial waist, he certainly didn't look the part of the era's finest medium-pacer, but they were few who qustioned his credentials.
Shaw's first-class career extended from 1864 to 1897, and most of his matches were for Nottinghamshire. He had the unusual distinction for a professional of frequently captaining that county, and this was vindicated when he took Notts to four successive Championships from 1883 to '86. He was a natural leader with a power persona, but his connection with Notts all but ended after that last triumph. As his team-mates observed, the county went into rapid decline upon his leaving.
A fervent champion of the professional cricketer's rights, Shaw did a lot of work in support of his ilk. He declined to tour with WG Grace in 1873/74 because the pros were to be afforded only second-class facilities. In 1881, he led a strike of Notts professionals, demanding a formal contract of employment to guarantee an automatic benefit at the end of an agreed playing period. The high-handed Nottinghamshire committee thought this absolute anarchy and, apparently justified in its feeling that an amateur skipper was the way to go, dropped every member of the offending faction from the side. There was eventually a reconciliation, however, and Shaw took on the capaincy once more.
He was a remarkably accurate bowler, sending down more overs than he conceded runs in his entire career. Of course, a maiden over was far more easily bowled then than it is now -- it comprised only four deliveries --, but Shaw's unparalleled consistency in this regard scarcely dropped off when the five-ball over was launched in 1889. Nearly two thirds of all the overs that he bowled were runless.
Although he might by today's terms be called a seamer, back then Shaw was fundamentally a length bowler, holding a line on or just outside the off-stump: certainly, he often employed the off-theory, with as many as eight fielders patrolling the offside. His run-up was made up of six rapid, economical steps, but, according to the man himself, "I really used to bowl faster than people thought I did, and I could make the ball break both ways, but not much. In my opinion, length and variation of pace constitute the secret of successful bowling." However, although he was regarded almost universally as "the high priest of length", he and Ted Peate together poured scorn all over suggestions that they were capable of "hitting the spot" with nearly every delivery (as was the common perception).
Shaw's first-class bowling average is, by a quite substantial margin, the lowest of any bowler to have taken 2,000 or more wickets, but must be remembered that the wickets of the Nineteenth Century (particularly those at the start of his career) were far more bowler-friendly than they later became and are today. Still, this did not stop cricket's most reputed potentate, WG Grace, from asserting that, between 1870 and 1880, Shaw was "perhaps the best bowler in England".[1] Certainly, he was supreme among slow bowlers.
It has occasionally been put forward that, were Shaw to feature in modern-day limited-overs cricket, he would come in for a fair amount of punishment -- as all bowlers sometimes do. It is just possible that the batsmen of the 1860s and 'seventies allowed him to settle as easily as he did onto that dogged length of his when they might just as easily have tried to knock him off it. Grace aside, it was not until the advent of such cavalier batters as the Surrey duo Walter Read and KJ Key (together with -- and in no small part because of -- superior pitches), that the pull-stroke, played across the line of a ball outside the off-stump, came to be properly employed. It had generally seen as unethical to swing an offside delivery away to leg, and Shaw, with his vacant legside, often had to change his tactics.
For many years, he was on the MCC groundstaff. In 1874, he took all ten wickets for the club in a first-class innings. In 1875 (against the MCC this time), he returned bowling figures of seven for seven off 41.2 overs -- 36 of them maidens. In 1876, Shaw became the first man to send down more than 10,000 deliveries in a first-class season. That total of 10,723 (the equivalent of almost 1,800 modern-day overs) remained a record until Tich Freeman beat it over fifty years later.
At the end of that 1876 season, Shaw went Down Under with James Lillywhite Junior's side. He is famous for having bowled the first-ever delivery in Test Match cricket (a dot, of course) to Charles Bannerman, who went on to score a magnificent 165. Shaw played in seven of the first eight Test Matches, missing out in 1882 because, according to a 1902 interview with Allan Steel, "he was not bowling quite at his best". Some, though, felt that his presence in the side that year might have turned the tide England's way and ruled out the spawning of The Ashes. As it was, he never played another Test Match and thus finished his career at the highest level with twelve wickets at an uncharacteristically large average of 23.75.
Shaw helped fellow cricketers Andrew Stoddart and Arthur Shrewsbury to organise what became recognised as the first British Lions rugby union tour of Australia 1888/89. The team played 55 matches, winning 27 of 35 rugby union games and 6 out of 18 matches played under Australian rules.
After Shaw's first retirement, he became a renowned umpire, but perhaps his greatest playing achievements were still ahead of him. Along with his cricketing engagements under cricket-mad Lord Sheffield, he was employed to coach young Sussex cricketers, and it didn't go unnoticed that he was still far better than most of the county's regular bowlers. Thus, at the ripe old age of 52, Alfred Shaw returned to county cricket.
In 1894, he bowled 422 overs for his new county, conceding just 516 runs and capturing 41 wickets. The following year, at Trent Bridge (when it was so cold that KS Ranjitsinhji kept his hands in his pockets and fielded the ball with his feet), Shaw bowled 100.1 five-ball overs as his former team accrued gargantuan 726. He finally retired again two matches later, when Sussex drew against Middlesex, and only ever returned to the first-class scene in 1897 to play the Gentlemen of Philadelphia. He subsequently became a publican and died aged 64.
| Preceded by Lord Harris |
English national cricket captain 1881/2 |
Succeeded by A N Hornby |
[edit] See also
- History of Test cricket (to 1883)
- History of Test cricket (1884 to 1889)
- History of Test cricket (1890 to 1900)
[edit] Notes
- ^ Simon Wilde, Number One: The World's Best Batsmen and Bowlers, Victor Gollancz, 1998, ISBN 0-575-06453-6, p62.
