Bernard James Tindal Bosanquet (13 October 1877 – 12 October 1936) was an English cricketer best known for inventing the googly, a delivery designed to deceive the batsman. When bowled, it appears to be a leg break, but after pitching the ball turns in the opposite direction to that which is expected, behaving as an off break instead. Bosanquet, who played first-class cricket for Middlesex between 1898 and 1919, appeared in seven Test matches for England as an all-rounder. He was chosen as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1905.
Bosanquet played cricket for Eton College from 1891 to 1896, before gaining his Blue at Oriel College, Oxford. He was a moderately successful batsman who bowled at fast-medium pace for Oxford University between 1898 and 1900. As a student, he made several appearances for Middlesex and achieved a regular place in the county side as an amateur. While playing a tabletop game, Bosanquet devised a new technique for delivering a ball, later named the "googly", which he practised during his time at Oxford. He first used it in cricket matches around 1900, abandoning his faster style of bowling, but it was not until 1903, when he had a successful season with the ball, that his new delivery began to attract attention. Having gone on several minor overseas tours, Bosanquet was selected in 1903–04 for the fully representative Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) tour of Australia. During that tour, he made his Test debut for England and although he largely failed as a batsman, he performed well as a bowler and troubled all the opposing batsmen with his googly.
More success followed; in the 1904 season, he took more than 100 wickets and his bowling career peaked when he took eight wickets for 107 runs in the first Test against Australia in 1905 to bowl England to victory. However, he never mastered control of good length bowling and remained an erratic performer. After 1905, Bosanquet's bowling went into decline; he practically gave it up and made fewer first-class appearances owing to his business interests. After taking part in the First World War in the Royal Flying Corps, he married and had a son, Reginald Bosanquet, who later became a television newsreader. He died in 1936, aged 58.
Early life Bosanquet was born in Bulls Cross, Enfield, Middlesex, on 13 October 1877. He was one of five children of Bernard Tindal Bosanquet and his wife Eva Maude Cotton, daughter of Sir William James Richmond Cotton; Bosanquet had a younger brother and three sisters. His younger brother Nicolas Edmund Tindal Bosanquet also played cricket for Eton. Many of his relations were well known in their fields, including his uncle and namesake Bernard Bosanquet the philosopher.Green, p. 176. His grandfather, James Whatman Bosanquet, was a banker and achieved distinction as a biblical historian. His father worked for the banking firm Bosanquet & Co., and became a partner in a firm of hide, leather, and fur brokers in London; he was also High Sheriff of Middlesex from 1897 to 1898 and captained Enfield cricket club. His great-grandfather, Sir Nicolas Conyngham Tindal, was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas between 1829 and 1846.
After going to Sunnymede School in Slough, Bosanquet attended Eton College between 1891 and 1896. While at Eton, he received cricket coaching from the Surrey professionals Maurice Read and Bill Brockwell. They improved his play to the point where he played for the cricket first eleven in 1896. Against Winchester College, he took three wickets and scored 29 not out in the second innings, while at Lord's Cricket Ground against Harrow School, Bosanquet scored 120 runs in 140 minutes. At this time, he bowled fast-medium pace, while as a batsman he had developed, in the words of his obituary in The Times, "a rather curious, wristless style; stiff and yet powerful".
Oxford University
In 1897, Bosanquet went to Oriel College, Oxford, and although he left in 1900 without completing a degree, he recorded many sporting accomplishments. Making his first-class debut in 1898 for Oxford University against a team selected by Middlesex captain A. J. Webbe, he had little batting success during the season, having a top score of 17 runs. He was more productive with the ball, twice taking five wickets in an innings for Oxford, and was awarded his cricket Blue. Selected for the University Match, he made 54 not out, his highest score of the season. He later made two appearances for Middlesex, but did not distinguish himself, scoring 17 runs and taking no wickets.Warner, p. 14. In all first-class matches in 1898, Bosanquet scored 168 runs at a batting average of 14.00 and took 30 wickets at a bowling average of 18.70. At the end of the season, he joined a team led by Plum Warner which toured America, where he had further success as a bowler.
Bosanquet improved his record for Oxford in 1899, scoring two fifties and taking five wickets on three occasions before the University Match. Against Cambridge, he failed with the bat but took seven wickets for 89 runs in the first innings. Bosanquet's record earned him selection for the Gentlemen against the Players; in this prestigious match he took only one wicket but scored 61 runs. He played another two matches for Middlesex and ended the season with a batting record of 419 runs in all matches, at an average of 27.93, and 55 wickets at 22.72. He played some end of season non-first-class matches for I Zingari, taking 16 wickets in a game against Ireland, and went on another tour of America, led by K. S. Ranjitsinhji.
Bosanquet's final season for Oxford was his best statistically. He scored his maiden first-class century against London County and, against Sussex, he recorded what were to be the best bowling figures of his career, taking nine for 31 in the second innings and a total of 15 wickets in the game for 65 runs. His final match for Oxford was the 1900 University Match, in which he scored 42 and 23. For the remainder of the season, Bosanquet re-joined Middlesex, and in his second match, against Leicestershire, achieved the rare distinction of a century in each innings: 136 in 110 minutes in the first innings, followed by 139 in 170 minutes in the second. He scored three further fifties for Middlesex and once took five wickets in an innings, but bowled comparatively rarely, only once bowling more than 13 overs in an innings. In all first-class matches in the season, Bosanquet scored 1,026 runs at 34.20 and took 50 wickets at 23.20.
In all his matches for Oxford, Bosanquet scored 801 runs at an average of 25.03 and took 112 wickets at an average of 19.49. In other sports, he received half-Blues for hammer-throwing and billiards, and also played ice hockey.
Developing the googly
Genesis
Bosanquet is remembered as the inventor of the googly, a delivery designed to deceive the batsman. When bowled, it appears to be a leg break, but after pitching the ball turns in the opposite direction to that expected, behaving as an off break instead. However, Bosanquet was a pace bowler in his university days. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack described his bowling from this period as "very useful ... but that was all, and had he kept to his original style real distinction at cricket would only have come to him through his batting". Furthermore, he disliked bowling quickly, believing he was destined only to be used as a last resort and that he would have little success as a fast bowler.Bosanquet, p. 364. Consequently, Bosanquet decided to change his style. According to his own account, his inspiration came in the mid-1890s,Bosanquet, p. 363. from a table-top game he often played called Twisti-Twosti; the object was to bounce a tennis ball on a table so that it could not be caught by an opposing player. Bosanquet began to experiment with ways of throwing the ball so that, after pitching, it turned and spun in an unexpected direction, without his opponent detecting any difference in the delivery. Finding he could do this successfully, he began to practise using the same method to bowl in a form of soft-ball cricket and then in the cricket nets with a hard ball, but did not at the time take his discovery seriously. It was not until 1899 or 1900 that Bosanquet began to practise in earnest, and developed an orthodox leg break in the nets to complement his new style of delivery, which spun in the same direction as an off break. During the lunch breaks in Oxford matches, he would often bowl to the best opposing batsmen in the nets, delivering several leg breaks, followed by an off break, without changing his bowling action; the ball would sometimes hit the bemused batsman on the knee, to the amusement of spectators. A slightly different version of events was provided by the son of Louise Bosanquet, Bernard's cousin, who claimed in 1965 that Bosanquet conceived the idea in 1890 and practised bowling to Louise with a tennis ball from 1893 onwards.Green, p. 181. There were later suggestions that other cricketers invented the googly before Bosanquet. In 1935, Jack Hobbs wrote that Kingsmill Key, a former captain of Surrey, told him that the googly was invented by an Oxford student, Herbert Page, in the 1880s. Key claimed that Page bowled the delivery regularly, but never used it in a first-class match.
Practising throughout 1899 and 1900, Bosanquet began to use the googly in minor matches before using it in important cricket. His first use of the new delivery in first-class cricket came in the match against Leicestershire in 1900 in which he scored two centuries. In the second innings, Samuel Coe had scored 98 when Bosanquet, still known as a fast-bowler, bowled his off break; the ball bounced four times and the batsman was stumped (although, writing in 1925, Bosanquet recalled Coe had been bowled).Green, p. 177. Bosanquet later wrote that the wicket "was rightly treated as a joke, and was the subject of ribald comment". Middlesex captains permitted him to try googlies if there was little pressure on, but he later wrote: "Though I could claim some five or six wickets before the close of the season, my efforts produced far more laughter than dismay in the hearts of opposing batsmen".Bosanquet, p. 365. But Bosanquet persisted with the delivery and soon began to be noticed by influential cricketers who recognised the potential of the googly. Previously, some bowlers occasionally bowled unintended googlies, but were unable to control them. Although batsmen were accustomed to off break or leg break bowlers, it was an unprecedented problem to face a bowler who could bowl both types of delivery at will, disguising which one he bowled. Bosanquet persuaded teammates to remain silent as he wished to maintain the impression that his off break was an accident so that batsmen were not expecting it. He further tried to play down his successes: he feigned surprise, acting as if they were similarly accidental.Green, p. 178.
It was around 1903 that Bosanquet's delivery first became known as a "googly". Pelham Warner claimed that the first use of the word was in the Lyttelton Times, a newspaper based in Canterbury, New Zealand, during a 1902–03 tour, but subsequent research has failed to find it. Some have suggested a Maori origin for the word, although other explanations include a derivation from "guile" meaning cunning, or from the word "googler", meaning a high, flighted delivery at the time.Parkinson, p. 31.
Regular use in County Cricket