Spedegue's Dropper: Sir Arthur's Cricketing Phenomenon
Spedegue's Dropper: Sir Arthur's Cricketing Phenomenon is an article written by Derek Hinrich published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 5, 1994).
This literary and sporting analysis examines Arthur Conan Doyle's short story The Story of Spedegue's Dropper, placing it within cricket fiction traditions while exploring its narrative motifs, humour, and possible real-life inspirations. It also discusses Conan Doyle's own cricketing experience and the wider cultural context of the game in early twentieth-century literature and sport.
Spedegue's Dropper: Sir Arthur's Cricketing Phenomenon
For many years after the First World War, Australia was the dominant cricketing power (though of course until almost the very end of the twenties there were only three Test Match playing countries: England, Australia and South Africa). Except upon sticky wickets1 (now, unfortunately, a thing of the past), the strength, brilliance and depth of batting, coupled with a varied and penetrating attack, ensured Australia her position.
At length, in desperation, the English Selection Committee decided upon new and revolutionary tactics to break the Australian grip on the Ashes.2 A new bowler of great accuracy and fair speed (32 feet per second per second, I believe) was found who delivered a concentrated (and potentially physically dangerous) attack on the leg stump3 with a massed on-side field placed to catch the snicks and deflections this onslaught encouraged.
No, the name of this bowler was not Harold Larwood (4) but Thomas E. Spedegue, and he appears in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Story of Spedegue's Dropper'. This late short story appeared originally in the Strand for October 1928 and was included in Sir Arthur's last collection of his shorter works, The Maracot Deep and Other Stories (1929). It was never included in The Conan Doyle Stories and has since only been occasionally republished, as far as I know, in anthologies of cricket fiction. In America, the story was published in The Maracot Deep and Other Stories, though one suspects that few outside Philadelphia' would understand it.
The story tells how a former captain of Hampshire CCC, Walter Scougall, while walking in the New Forest, chances upon a young schoolmaster, Thomas Spedegue, practising a revolutionary new method of bowling which he is in the process of perfecting. Scougall is so taken by Spedegue's unique skill that after watching him play, first for his local village eleven and then in a country house match against a Free Foresters' side with some useful players in it, he takes him off to Lord's. Scougall then persuades the Selection Committee, after a secret trial in the early morning, to include the phenomenal new bowler in the list of players from which the team for the final and decisive Test Match at the Oval6 will be chosen.
This, of course, causes a sensation. The press scours the country for news of this unknown whose name has been thrust forward so mysteriously. In time his identity is discovered and the lowly nature of the cricket he has hitherto played is also revealed, but not his new method. The cricket correspondents heap scorn and contumely upon the heads of the Committee.
The day of the Match arrives. Spedegue is included in the England team (the captain was privy to the trial). England bats first and scores 432 on the first day (such things were possible then, and sides bowled more than one hundred- and-twenty overs in a day, too!). On the following morning Australia goes in to bat and Spedegue is put on to bowl the second over. He loses his nerve and his first over is hooted at in derision. But he then recovers, in the best storybook fashion, by taking a brilliant catch in the slips, and then puts his new style fully into operation. The result is that Australia is bowled out twice in a day on a good wicket, England wins with an innings to spare, and Spedegue takes fifteen wickets in the match for ninety-two runs.
So England recovers the Ashes, but Spedegue, alas, is an asthmatic with a weak heart and the strain of his success is too much for him. He is never able to play cricket again.
And Spedegue's method? Why, the Dropper of course. He has trained himself to bowl super-full tosses7, which soar fifty feet into the air and come down with meticulous accuracy, like the fire of a howitzer, over the top of the leg stump.
'Spedegue's Dropper' is not one of Conan Doyle's most memorable works by a long chalk. As a tale it is very slight, but it is an agreeable piece of humorous and whimsical fantasy, told with all the customary skill and charm of its author.
The plot of the unknown hero of incredible skill, who suddenly appears from nowhere to vanquish a hitherto invincible foe, whether it be Shane or Arthur Machen's Bowmen, is a very old one, at least as old as the legend of Perseus and Andromeda. Two other notable versions in cricket fiction are, for example, part of A.G. MacDonnell's How Like an Angel, and in the last days of the Strand itself (June 1948) we find another similar story of considerable charm: 'The Greatest Cricketer That Ever Was' by Noah Mann (a pseudonym of the novelist and cricket journalist, Denzil Bachelor). Here, too, the demon player-in this case an all-rounder-having trounced the 1899 Australian team in an unofficial match, suffers an injury which prevents his ever playing again after achieving a phenomenal performance. He also suffers permanent amnesia!
Such stories are daydreams-and yet Sydney Barnes would appear in almost like manner from the leagues or the Minor Counties to shatter Australia or South Africa and then eschew the First Class game again.
Amongst his many sporting skills, Conan Doyle was no mean cricketer and played club cricket of a good standard. Indeed, his obituary in Wisden says, ' ... he could hit hard and bowl slows with a puzzling flight. For MCC9 v Cambridgeshire at Lord's, in 1899, he took seven wickets for sixty-one runs, and on the same ground two years later carried out his bat for thirty-two against Leicestershire, who had Woodcock, Geeson and King to bowl for them...' Cambridgeshire had by this time reverted to the Minor Counties, but Leicestershire had been raised to First Class status in 1895. Woodcock was reckoned to be the second fastest bowler in England, while King played frequently for the Players, and once for England.
The idea for 'Spedegue's Dropper' is said to have arisen from an incident in a match when Conan Doyle was bowled by a freak ball from the former test cricketer and man-of-many-counties, A.P. Lucas (who is said by some to have been the model for E.W. Hornung's creation A.J. Raffles-at least as far as the cricketing side of the amateur cracksman is concerned!). On this occasion, Lucas is said to have stumbled or let the ball slip in his delivery stride, so that it went some thirty feet in the air before knocking down Conan Doyle's wicket.
I witnessed a similar incident some forty years ago, while fielding at cover in much less distinguished cricketing circles. The bowler tripped in an old foothold as he let go of the ball and it went up quite twenty feet or so and hurtled down on the batsman's leg stump. The batsman had gone down on his hands and knees with arms around his head when he saw the ball coming at him, only to have it crash into the stumps behind him. As he walked off he looked at the wreck of his wicket and said, 'Now that's really getting out for a duck! 10'
So once in a blue moon, someone could bowl Spedegue's Dropper, but to be able to bowl it regularly would be quite another thing. And I doubt whether the Australians, or any other side, would be as ready to laugh it off now, as they are supposed to do at the end of this happy little tale. Conan Doyle did not discuss this aspect-it would spoil his story, and anyway he of course wrote it in the pre-bodyline 11 era. But nowadays Spedegue's Dropper would certainly be considered dangerous. A stream of more than head-high full tosses directed at the leg stump, an endless succession of beamers! Where's the umpire? Where's Law 42.9-'Unfair Play: the bowling of Fast High Full Pitches'? Poor Spedegue would have been no-balled 12 out of the game by his second delivery! Spedegue was accounted a slow bowler but says himself that the ball, aided by a little leg spin, would accelerate as it descended-by thirty-two feet per second per second perhaps?-to quite a fast rate.
One idle thought occurs to me. Did reading 'The Story of Spedegue's Dropper' by any chance play a part in the genesis of those tactics originally called 'Fast Leg Theory' but now generally known as 'bodyline'? Super-full tosses are simply not practical, but shortish fast bowling to leg with a similar field-now there's a thought. And the Don may well be vulnerable to a fast short ball on the leg at the start of his innings...
A little far-fetched? One certainly hopes so. The very thought would have horrified Sir Arthur, whose whole life, we all know, was characterised by good sportsmanship, fair dealing, and the desire to defeat injustice.
But such is the death of innocence in our time in sport, as in so much else, that one might wonder a little. After all, Sir Arthur proved himself a notable prophet in his fiction in so many ways that, if his work was used by other hands to conjure a dark genie for once from the bottle, it ought not to surprise us.
Notes for the non-cricketer
1. Sticky Wicker: 'Wicket' in this instance means the pitch on which the game is played. A sticky wicket is one drying quickly after rain; one on which the batsman encounters exceptional difficulty.
2. The Ashes. Test matches between England and Australia are played for 'The Ashes' of the body of English cricket, said in a humorous obituary in The Sporting Times to have been cremated and the ashes taken to Australia following Australia's first victory in such a match in England on 29 August 1882.
3. Leg stump: That one of the three uprights and two bails forming a wicket which is closest to a batsman as he faces the bowler.
4. Harold Larwood: A great England and Nottinghamshire fast bowler of great speed and remarkable accuracy for one of his pace. He was the spearhead of England's bowling in the seasons between 1926-33, and the one who devastated the Australian batting in the 'bodyline' Test Match series of 1932-33 in Australia.
5. Philadelphia. Until the Civil War, cricket was the summer game of the U.S.A. Its subsequent decline probably arose from the heavy casualties in the War of young men of Anglo-Saxon ancestry, coupled with the heavy influx of immigrants from other parts of Europe, who found the game too difficult to understand in comparison with baseball. Cricket, however, continued to be played in and around Philadelphia until the First World War. The Gentlemen of Philadelphia toured England three times, playing First Class counties between 1897 and 1908, and on their own heath defeated an Australian Test Team in 1896.
6. The Oval. The headquarters of the Surrey County Cricket Club in Kennington and where the first Test Matches were played in England.
7. Full Toss (or Full Pitch): A ball which does not, or would not, pitch before passing, or hitting, the batsman's wicket.
8. Wisden: Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack (1864-) is the leading cricket annual, recording all major matches, obituaries of distinguished players, and cricket records of all sorts.
9. MCC: The Marylebone Cricket Club, the premier English cricket club; long the governing body of the game and responsible for its laws (cricket has laws: other games merely have rules).
10. A duck. To be dismissed at cricket without scoring.
11. Bodyline, Fast, short-pitched bowling directed at, or about, the leg stump, supported by four or more close fielders on the leg side of the pitch. It was devised to curtail the scoring of the Australian batsmen and, in particular, that of D.G. Bradman ('the Don'), who had previously scored 2,695 runs in 26 innings in 18 test matches against England, South Africa and the West Indies. It is now forbidden.
12. No Ball: A ball bowled in such a way that it is disallowed by the laws of cricket. When such a ball is bowled the umpire calls 'No Ball', and gives the prescribed signal to the scorer (by extending one arm horizontally).
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
