I was poking round the churchyard at Sutton Valance when this well maintained 19th century gravestone caught my eye. It commemorates John Willes (1777-1852).
The epitaph reads in part:
"He was a patron of all manly sports and introduced round arm bowling in cricket."
I couldn't leave it at that- so I looked at some websites. It seems the epitaph is an oversimplification.
Round arm bowling is when you deliver the ball with a straight arm from the level of your shoulder. In the early days the approved style of bowling was underarm- which greatly favoured the batter. Bowlers chafed at the restriction and some of them went round arm- and at the level of village cricket this was sometimes allowed. Willes was the first bowler to go round arm in a first class match- the one between the MCC and Kent on July 15, 1822. According to legend he was immediately no-balled, threw a strop, stalked off the ground, got on his horse and rode away, never to play cricket at that level again.
But he'd made his point and by the end of the 1820s the more aggressive style had become acceptable. It was a halfway house- with bowlers now pushing the envelope by raising their arms higher and higher until they arrived at the full-on catapult action that is over-arm bowling. This too was discouraged at first but is now the norm. Round arm remains legal and there are still a few top players who employ it.
I looked for a portrait of Willes- and couldn't find one. I think he must have been unmarried. He died far from home in reduced circumstances. It seems his grave was originally unmarked- with the stone eventually being paid for by "a few friends".