Bowling (cricket)

In cricket, underarm bowling is as old as the sport itself. Until the introduction of the roundarm style in the first half of the 19th century, bowling was always performed with an underarm action wherein the bowler's hand is below his waist at the point of delivery. For centuries, bowling was performed exactly as in bowls because, depending on the pace of delivery, the ball was rolled (slow), skimmed (fast) or trundled (medium) along the ground with no bounce. Despite the variations in pace, the basic action was essentially the same and there are surviving illustrations from the first half of the eighteenth century which depict the bowler with one knee bent forward and his bowling hand close to the ground, while the ball is bowled towards a batsman armed with a bat shaped something like a large hockey stick and guarding a two-stump wicket.

In the early 1760s, cricket was revolutionised by the introduction of pitched delivery bowling. The bouncing ball was an evolutionary change and has been described as the event that took cricket out of its "pioneering phase" into what may be termed its "pre-modern phase" (i.e., which ended when overarm bowling ushered in the modern game in 1864) and effectively created a different code of cricket, just as there are now two different codes of rugby football. By 1772, when the completion of detailed scorecards became commonplace, the pitched delivery was established practice and, in response to it, the modern straight bat had been invented, the hockey stick shape of bat being of little or no use against a bouncing ball.

Underarm was largely superseded by roundarm from the late 1820s onward and then almost totally after overarm was legalised in 1864. Underarm prevailed in the days of rudimentary pitch preparation because the ball did not run smoothly over the uneven surface and batsmen could easily be deceived by deflections off the rough. As better pitches with level surfaces became common, greater bounce became a necessity for the bowlers and so the game evolved through the bowling styles. By the 1920s, underarm was virtually extinct in the first-class game though there have been isolated instances of its usage, generally by non-bowlers called on to try something different or for a bit of fun when a match was in a stalemate situation.

Underarm was dramatically reintroduced on 1 February 1981 when, in the final of the Benson & Hedges World Series Cup at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the Australian bowler Trevor Chappell, under orders from his captain and brother Greg Chappell, rolled the final ball all along the ground to prevent New Zealand batsman Brian McKechnie from hitting it for the six runs that New Zealand needed to tie the match. The incident had widespread repercussions, being condemned as gamesmanship and sharp practice. It was not actually a no ball because an underarm action was legal at the time.

As a direct result of the incident, the International Cricket Council ruled that underarm bowling in limited overs cricket is "not within the spirit of the game". This necessitated a change in the Laws of Cricket and Law 21.1.2 now states that "underarm bowling shall not be permitted except by special agreement before the match".