Whenever Ramadhin hit the front pad in that Test match and appealed, the umpires gave the England batsman not out. He bowled 774 balls in that game, the most in any single innings to that point, and he was renowned for bowling wicket to wicket, yet not a single ball was deemed by the umpires Charlie Elliott and Emrys Davies to be going on to hit the stumps after hitting the pad – not a single ball by Ramadhin or any of the other West Indian bowlers for that matter.
Ramadhin’s method in that Edgbaston Test was fairly summed up by the Wisden editor Norman Preston: “Ramadhin kept his opponents guessing by his peculiar flick of the right wrist. None could tell his intention, whether he was attempting off spin or leg spin. As usual, he kept his shirt sleeves buttoned at the wrists and it was difficult to see how the ball left his right hand. He acquired very little spin and the majority of his wickets were taken with straight balls.” Straight balls, please note. Five of his nine wickets in that Edgbaston Test were clean-bowled.
The second consequence was not far short of fatal for Test cricket. Having seen England’s two best batsmen survive by padding away Ramadhin, and never given out leg-before-wicket, many more batsmen followed their example. The practice came into being of playing at spinners with the pad in front of the bat: as long as you made some vague pretence of playing a stroke, you could not be given out.
