Punch bowl

“ Put a small block of clear ice in the punch bowl, pour in the punch, then add to it either Maraschino cherries, or hulled small ripe strawberries, or pineapple or bananas, peeled and cut in tiny dice—or a mixture of all these. Serve in chilled punch cups, with after-dinner coffee spoons for the fruit. The fruit can be left out, and the punch served with sandwiches the same as iced tea. A wineglass of yellow chartreuse, added just after the rum, is to many palates an improvement. So is a very little peach or apricot brandy. ”

“ “Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?” There was a husky tenderness in his tone.... ”

“ The boy at the head of the line takes the bowl, blows a bubble, and drops it on the table. The girl opposite tries to fan it under the arch before it breaks. Tally is kept with pink and blue paper disks on little tally cards which may be attached to the fans. Pink means a successful bowling; blue, a failure. As each two players complete their trial, they go to the foot of the line, which moves up to let the next two try. The game may consist of five rounds, or four if there are many players. A ribbon-bedecked pipe and a pretty fan might be the rewards given to the winning bowlers. ”

“ There is one species of ball which we have not discussed, deadly as it is, both in fast and slow bowling. This is the ball which, after the pitch, never rises, but shoots along the surface of the ground, and is commonly called a 'shooter.' The reason why no notice was taken of this when the different kinds of ball which may be bowled were being dealt with is because no amount of practice or skill can enable a bowler to bowl thus. It depends for existence upon inequalities in the ground. ”

“ The player to his right holds eight, the player to his left has only six—the right side wins, the left side loses. In an instant the croupier, with his huge paper-knife, sweeps up the cards, and, with the rapidity of a conjuring trick, he casts them into a wooden bowl in the middle of the table; then he rapidly sweeps off all the stakes on one side of the table; [Pg 110] with equal celerity he places each man's winnings before the players on the other side. There are no quarrels, and no mistakes. Everybody is terribly polite. ”

“ It is generally true that you should never leave your ground to any ball that may be called crooked, whether it is to leg or to the off, for in either case you run a serious risk of being stumped; it is only straight or nearly straight balls that you ought to meet by going out of your ground. The modern slow bowler is so very accurate that he very rarely bowls on the leg side at all, and the old-fashioned lobber who used to bowl on the leg side with a twist from leg and have four or five fields on the leg side is gradually disappearing. ”

“ There are only certain features that must be present whenever throwing exists. It is impossible to throw without bending the arm at the moment of delivery, indeed I have grave doubts whether it is possible to bowl fast with a bent arm without throwing. But this is absolutely certain—it never can be a throw if the ball is delivered with a straight arm: some bend of the arm must accompany every throw. It would seem from this that no so-called bowler, who bowls with a bent arm, must complain if his delivery is regarded with suspicion. ”

“ Bowling is called underarm when the arm in delivering the ball is swung nearly pendulum-wise, very much as it is at the game of bowls. Originally it was the only kind allowed. Nowadays fast and medium under-arm has gone completely out of fashion, and does not require many remarks. Nevertheless, if an under-arm bowler of this description were to appear and bowl a perfect length with lots of twist, as William Clarke is said to have done in the good old days, he would probably severely tax the defence of some of our eminent batsmen. ”

“ There is no greater or more successful trap for wild young players than these widish off balls. But it is indeed a trying time for the bowler when he keeps pitching just outside the off stump, and is not even played at by the batsman. Bowlers should, in these circumstances, bowl ball after ball on the off stump and just outside it. It is by no means an uncommon occurrence to see these punishing batsmen taken in by a ball that comes in a little with the arm, and removes the bail while they are striking an attitude, bat over shoulder. ”

“ The Treasure only consented to play after much pressure. He said:
“You know what the wicket is like; it’s simply mountainous, [Pg 514] and black men have no control over their bowling. For you medium-sized chaps it may be comparatively safe, but bowling at me is like bowling at a haystack—you cannot miss. When I go in, the blacks never bother about the stumps, but just let fly at random on the chance of winging me. Last match here, I hit their crack fast bowler all over the island, and he got mad at last, and gave up attempting to bowl me, but just tried to kill me.” ”

“ Lob bowlers cannot break both ways. This, I think, is quite true, and, roughly speaking, they may be divided into two classes—those who, like Ridley, bowl chiefly on the off stump, and break away, and have seven or eight fields on the off side; and those who, like Humphreys, keep on the on side. It may be asked. Why not combine the two styles? The answer is. You can, but if you do you want more than eleven fields: you do not try and bowl men out, but tempt them to hit, and if you bowl off balls, the batsmen has to get the ball away from eight men—not an easy thing to do ”

“ A golden rule for straight bowling is to present, at delivery, a full face to the opposite wicket; the shoulders being in the same line, or parallel with, the crease. That is the moment to quit the ball—a moment sooner and you will bowl wide to the leg, a moment later and you will bowl wide to the Off. Observe Wisden and Hillyer. They deliver just as their front is square with the opposite wicket. They look well at their mark, and bowl before they have swung too far round for the line of sight to be out of the line of the wicket. ”

“ You must adroitly get rid of the dime, which has remained secreted in your right hand, by placing it in your pocket or sleeve while making some humorous remark, or while asking some lady or gentleman to draw the woollen thread till it is all unwound. It will be done the quicker by letting the ball be confined loosely in the bowl with two fingers preventing its leaping out. ”

“ The bowl of soapsuds is placed upon a small stand by the side of the bowling-table, and the next in rank to the captain, belonging to same party, dips his pipe into the suds and blows a bubble, not too large, which he then tosses upon the table in front of the captain, who as first bowler, stands ready to blow the bubble on its course down through the goal. Three successive trials are allowed each player; the bubbles which break before the bowler has started them, are not counted. ”

“ He gives us pictures of ping-pong [Pg 357] in the kitchen; of people searching beneath the table and in corners for missing balls; a sketch of a ping-pong tournament, with local champions and devotees of all ages and callings.
In his "Cry of the Children" the younger generation lift up their voices in protest:—
We shall never know what peace is till we land upon that shore
Where the fathers cease from pinging and the mothers pong no more.
In 1902 the Table Tennis Gazette issued its first number, and Punch speculates on the contents ”

“ In overhand bowling the hand moves up and down in a straight line between hand and wicket; in round-arm bowling this is not the case, as anybody can see who takes a ball and makes the attempt. It requires more practice to bowl the ball where you want it to go if you bowl round-arm than it does if you bowl overhand, and the fact that bowling with the hand over the shoulder was not allowed before 1864 makes it obvious that the old bowling—that is, the round-arm bowling between 1830 and 1860—was more off the wicket than now. ”

“ Bawl Game
Competitors are lined up and directed to bawl. The one doing this the best, in the judgment of the judges, wins.
Peanut Relay
A bowl full of peanuts is placed before each competitor. An empty bowl is placed at some distance opposite each. Each competitor is given a table knife. At the signal to go, keeping his left hand behind his back, he takes one or more peanuts on the flat of his knife from the full bowl and deposits it or them in the empty bowl. He returns for more peanuts. He is not allowed to use his free hand in helping the peanuts on to the knife, or keeping them thereupon. ”

“ So fast bowlers pound the ball down, very short, very fast, with the hand as high as nature will allow, to get the batsman caught behind the wicket; but the ball is nothing more nor less than a long hop, and to bowl a series of long hops is not bowling, according to all well-established canons of the art. In the same way slow bowlers, in endeavouring to get as much twist on the ball as possible, have sacrificed all length and precision, and in some cases are driven to bowl outrageous bad balls in order to tempt an Abel or a Noble to hit the ball up. ”

“ To-day our large schools, as a rule, boast perhaps three or four professional bowlers; the boys who have the privilege of being coached by them daily get their half-hour's batting practice from their straight accurate bowling, and then usually their lesson is finished. Perhaps a boy may take a ball and bowl for a short time to a companion at the same net as the professional, but it is generally done, if done at all, in a careless, haphazard sort of fashion, there not being the same inducement to bowl straight and well as there used to be when professional bowlers were more scarce. ”

“ In theory the game of bowls is very simple, the aim of the player being to roll his bowl so as to cause it to rest nearer to the jack than his opponent’s, or to protect a well-placed bowl, or to dislodge a better bowl than his own. But in practice there is every opportunity for skill. On all good greens the game is played in rinks of four a side, there being, however, on the part of many English clubs still an adherence to the old-fashioned method of two and three a side rinks. ”

“ Each player is provided with two balls of the same colour, which he bowls towards a jack or die, the jack being placed at the side of the room opposite to that from which the players are stationed. The players decide the order in which they play, and then each one alternately bowls one of the balls towards the jack, and he who succeeds in placing his bowl nearest to the jack wins the game. When the players are more than three they may be divided into opposing sides, and it is then legitimate to play so as to knock an opponent's bowl away from, or a partner's bowl near to, the jack ”

“ As there was a period of about thirty years when round-arm bowling held the field, so now, after the lapse of another thirty years, overhand bowling has taken its place. Of course in the thirties there were plenty of bowlers who, like J. H. Kirwan, bowled with a very low arm, so in the sixties and seventies there were plenty of round-arm bowlers. But in 1899 hardly any bowler exists who does not bowl right above his head. ”

“ This state of things has driven bowlers to other expedients. They bowl in a great many cases beyond their strength so as to produce fast balls and length, and the science of the art is thereby lost. To bang down long hops for the purpose of terrifying batsmen and in the hope of getting the ball to bump and the batsmen to be caught behind the wicket, is not bowling in the true sense. ”

“ Subaltern: "Well, I thought we should get our fighting done by luncheon-time, and then we should have the afternoons to ourselves and could get a game of polo!"
If cricket claims less notice in Punch's pages, it must not be taken to imply any lessening of his love. The reason is to [Pg 352] be found in the richer field for satire and ridicule provided by other pastimes. The immense development of Association football as a spectacular game, and the wholesale importation of hireling players to represent a district to which they did not belong, found no favour with Punch. ”

“ Uncle Sam had been busy collecting championships in the interval, and in August, 1913, Punch represented him, carrying a model yacht, a tennis racket and a polo stick (he might have added a golf club in view of Mr. Travis's triumph at Sandwich in 1904) , saying to a rather rueful-looking John Bull in cricketing costume: "Say, John, what's this game, anyway? Cricket? Well, see here; mail me a copy of the rules, with date of next international championship. I'm just crazy on Cups." The Olympic Games furore left Punch cold. ”

“ The bowls with which the game was played were not precisely the same as those now manufactured. They had the shape of flattened oranges, and were loaded with lead inserted in one side to serve as bias, or tendency wards the end of the course to describe a sweep. When delivered, the ball runs directly to its end, but as soon as it reaches the point where the force that launched it is expended, then it curls, carried by the weight of the lead, and turns in an arc. ”

“ When the young men have finished the chewing, each deposits his portion in the form of a round dry ball in the bowl, the inside of which thus becomes studded over with a large number of these separate little masses. ”

“ The players stand at a distance, which may be varied by joint consent, and throw at the pins a large heavy bowl, which sometimes weighs six or eight pounds. The excellency of the game consists in beating them down by the fewest casts of the bowl. ”