page_title: Underarm bowling
section_title: Lob bowling
hierarchical_section_title: Underarm bowling / Lob bowling
caption_attribution_description: Caricature of Digby Jephson. Caption read "The Lobster".
context_page_description: 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 performed in the same way as in bowls, the ball being delivered with the hand below the waist. Bowls may well be an older game than cricket and it is possible that cricket was derived from bowls by the intervention of a batsman trying to stop the ball reaching its target by hitting it away, though bowling per se continued as in bowls.
context_section_description: In cricket, lob bowling is a largely disused style of bowling. It became illegal under Law 24.1 to use underarm bowling without prior agreement before the match following the incident in the 1980-81 World Series.
  The last regular bowler of lobs in international cricket was George Simpson-Hayward, in the period before the First World War. He bowled with a lower trajectory than most earlier lob bowlers, imparting great spin to the ball with constant variation of pace as well.
  Others famous "lobsters" include Digby Jephson.  As an underarm bowler he had an action a little like setting a wood in crown green bowling.
  It was used in the game in the 19th century, where trajectory was the most important consideration. Lob bowlers, both right and left-handed, sometimes attempted 'donkey drops', pitching the ball on the stumps from as great a height as possible, preferably with the ball descending behind the batsman standing at the crease.
  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a story about a similar style of bowling called The Story of Spedegue's Dropper.
  Today the laws pertaining to the bowling of "beamers" would be likely to render that kind of bowling illegal, and it would probably be deemed a no-ball. In accordance with Law 41.7.1, a ball that passes the batsman's waist height on the full is a no-ball.
  Charles Palmer (1919–2005), who played for Worcestershire and Leicestershire, sometimes used donkey-drops to good effect.
  Lob bowling is still sometimes found in village cricket; these deliveries are known as donkey-drops. More usually these are over-arm deliveries; but round-arm is also possible and would more closely approximate a traditional lob.
caption: "The Lobster" Jephson as caricatured by Spy in Vanity Fair, May 1902
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