Pitched delivery bowling

In cricket in the early 1760s, there was a transition from the sport's "pioneering phase" to its "pre-modern phase" when bowlers began to bowl pitched deliveries by pitching the ball towards the wicket instead of rolling or skimming it along the ground as they had always done formerly, since time immemorial. The essential bowling action was still underarm but the introduction of a ball travelling through the air coupled with a bounce was a key point of evolution in the sport's history, especially as it was the catalyst for the invention of the straight bat, which replaced the old "hockey stick" design. It was the first of three keypoint evolutions in bowling: the others were the introduction of the roundarm style in the 1820s and overarm in the 1860s.

In John Nyren's Memoranda (1832), he wrote the following account of the All-England v Kent match played in 1744:

It arose from a challenge given by Lord John Sackville on the part of the County of Kent to play all England; and it proved to be a well contested match as will appear from the manner in which the players kept the field. The hitting however could neither have been of a high character nor indeed safe, as may be gathered from the figure of the bat at that time; which was similar to an old-fashioned dinner knife, curved at the back and sweeping in the form of a volute at the front and end. With such a bat the system must have been all for hitting; it would be barely possible to block and when the practice of bowling length balls was introduced and which gave the bowler so great an advantage in the game it became necessary to change the form of the bat. It was therefore made strait in the pod (sic). Some years after this the fashion of the bat having been changed to a strait form the system of stopping and blocking was adopted.

This is effectively all that can be found in early sources about the introduction of the "length ball" and the consequent development of the "strait" bat. The evolution occurred after 1744 and before 1770. Given the rise of Hambledon from the mid-1760s, it is believed to have happened c.1760 during the Seven Years' War in which there was apparently a lull in important matches, certainly in terms of known matches until it ended in 1763.

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