The Ashes 2013: how cricket misses Terry Alderman and the trusty trundlers In England he was devastating. On the 1888 tour he took five wickets in an innings on 30 occasions, 10 wickets in a match a dozen times. The Terror's career was ended prematurely by climate change. La Nina which had produced damp, almost Derbyshire-like conditions, in Australia in the 1880s whistled off never to return. Other Antipodeans followed in Turner's slow but steady footsteps. Ernie "The Black Prince" Toshack was a dobber of such nagging accuracy he once restricted Sussex's batsmen to a grand total of three scoring shots during a 17-over spell; Bill Johnston, a tall left-arm seamer who consistently outperformed his more celebrated team-mates Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller despite a shambling appearance that led one heckler to compare him to "a galloping hatstand." And, of course, there was also Bob Massie, who learnt his seaming and swinging trade playing in Scotland and forgot it during a disastrous tour of the West Indies, along the way taking 16 wickets on his Test debut at Lord's in 1972. England, meanwhile, can boast such trundling greats as George Lohmann, Jack Hearne, Maurice Tate (a man of such endearing modesty he refused to let his wife decorate their pub with mementoes of his career for fear people would think he was showing off) and Alec Bedser. Perhaps our most brutally effective bowling force ever was the one that ripped Australia apart in 1911-12, a three-pronged military medium-paced attack featuring obdurate all-rounder and captain John Douglas ("a medium-pace bowler and slow-medium pace batsman" the wags said), left-arm glamour boy Frank Foster and the incomparable SF Barnes, who in a previous Ashes series had bowled Victor Trumper with a delivery the non-striker Charlie McCartney described as "the sort of ball a man might see when he was dreaming, or drunk." The trundling trio proved so devastating as they set up a 4-1 series win that Yorkshire all-rounder Wilfred Rhodes - the most successful spinner in the history of the game - had to be content to play as a batsman. Nowadays, as Alderman regretfully concluded, the Ashes is dominated by pace, bounce and turn. In the past, I, like many others, failed to appreciate the subtle joys of Max Walker and Richard Ellison, may even have voiced the opinion that Geoff Arnold was boring, or groaned when Gary Gilmour removed his sweater. I am wiser now and sincerely hope to one day see the emergence of a dobber to rival the great Derek Shackleton, of Hampshire, who took 100 wickets in a season 20 times despite, or possibly because of, a pre-match warm-up that consisted of smoking a cigarette while combing his hair. The Trundlers - The Military Medium-Paced Story Of Cricket's Most Invaluable Breed, by Harry Pearson, is published by Little, Brown