Who Invented Round Arm Bowling In Cricket?

Who Invented Round Arm Bowling In Cricket?: Cricket has gained a lot of popularity around the globe after the limited-over World Cups started. In 1975 the first-ever limited over World Cup was played which West Indies won with dominant pacers of over 6 feet and dangerous batsmen like Viv Richards.

Over time cricket evolved so much that new techniques to bowl and bat got introduced such as the Scoop shot, Reverse Sweep, Helicopter Shot, etc in batting and doosra, carrom, knuckle, etc. in the bowling.

But to talk about techniques, there were also rules laid out to bat and bowl in a manner such as wide crease, bowling line, fielders counting on one side, and stumping from behind the wickets. In this article we will find out about the prominent technique of bowling and who introduced it.

Who invented round-arm bowling in cricket? 

In the early 1800s, cricket was played mostly on the English soil among the men and women. But there was one rule that was not amended by that time, round-arm bowling. At that time people used to bowl underarm and there were no restrictions regarding legal action required to bowl.

The women athletes faced a severe problem while bowling at that time, they used to wear long skirts while playing, and while bowling, their arms got stuck in their skirts with an underarm action. One fine day Cristiana Willes bowled with a round arm action to avoid the hindrance from the skirt while bowling underarm and it impressed the audience and the viewers.

She was bowling to her brother John Willes who also played County Cricket for Kent Cricket Club. It is said that on 15th July 1822 in a match between Kent and MCC John Willes tried out this technique in a match and forced the cricket experts and athletes to think about the effectiveness of this technique.

All thanks to Cristiana who invented this action just to bowl her brother John and he used it in his county cricket matches from where it got picked and was levied in the rules of cricket.

Cricket World Cup Winner 

The first-ever Men’s Cricket World Cup was played in 1975 in England, where the mighty West Indies won the tournament final against Australia. Other than this, there’s another fun fact that a World Cup was played before the Men.

The first ever Women’s World Cup was played in 1973 where England lifted the title and that’s the importance of women in cricket who led these improvements in techniques of cricket which the contemporary viewers and athletes practice.

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