Picture Quiz / Gallery: "Batsmanship"

It is also exactly a century since CB Fry's great willow manual came out.

The book is still quite often cited as a/the classic study of how to bat. (For good shot selection, but more especially for the correct "mechanics and timing", as the author put it. Appropriate footwork and the proper distribution of the batsman's weight for each stroke being what Fry was mainly banging on about for the +/- 250 pages.)


Again - obviously - cricket and other things have changed quite a lot in a hundred years.

But then again, perhaps not everything.


Here anyway are half of the 32 images from the original edition of "CB Fry: Cricket. BATSMANSHIP" (1912).

The Quiz part is to identify (or guess): Which stroke is Fry attempting to demonstrate in each one? (Some strokes have out-of-date names, hence to us quaint captions, but see if you can decide where the ball is meant to go.)

Some of these pictures were meant by Fry to show how NOT to play a particular stroke. So can you also identify which shots are demonstrating "faulty mechanics"? (Just say "WRONG"! wherever you think he is pointing out a flawed technique.)

Obviously, you don't have to do them all (or any). There are 15 pictures, each is individually guessable.


Here's an example:



The caption says: "The early part of the down-swing in the forward-stroke".

In modern terms, (start of) the Forward Defensive. [And correct!]

Very precise hands and feet, head well down, and no gloves I see.



Please "spoiler" if you decide to have a go.

btw: I think these are jolly capital pictures in their own right. Hence also a "Gallery", not just a "Quiz".

01

02 (not the forward defensive - see bat angle!)

03 (not the forward defensive either!)

04

05

06

07

08

09

10

11

12

13

14

15

Bloodyhell Pete. I haven't a clue. They all look so biomechanically foreign.

Pah! You pipsqueaks, popinjays and waterflies have no bally idea how to bat, SAH!!

I mean, look at #15 - is that even a shot? Maybe ODI Ian Bell could call it a shot, but not one of them what does one of them scoring things.

That one is not a shot exactly.

Spoiler:

OK I'll go for it.

Spoiler:

Jebus, they look like shots I'd play. Just born in the wrong century, I guess. Random guessing wherever possible

Spoiler:

Similar topics

» MENSA Quiz answers

PeterCS wrote:04

looks like the patented "twat it away from rolling into the stumps" shot.