contemporaries. He declined to tour with WG Grace in 1873/74 because the professionals in the squad were to be afforded only second-class facilities. In 1881, he led a strike of Notts professionals, demanding a formal contract of employment to guarantee an automatic benefit at the end of an agreed playing period. The high-handed Nottinghamshire committee thought this absolute anarchy and, apparently justified in its feeling that an amateur skipper was the way to go, dropped every member of the offending faction from the side. There was eventually a reconciliation, however, and Shaw took on the captaincy once more. He was a remarkably accurate bowler, sending down more overs than he conceded runs in his entire career. A maiden over was more easily bowled then than it is now, as it comprised only four deliveries, but Shaw's unparalleled consistency in this regard scarcely dropped off when the five-ball over was launched in 1889. Nearly two-thirds of all the overs that he bowled were runless. Although he might by today's terms be called a seamer, back then Shaw was fundamentally a length bowler, holding a line on or just outside the off-stump: certainly, he often employed the off-theory, with as many as eight fielders patrolling the offside. His run-up was made up of six rapid, economical steps, but, according to the man himself, "I really used to bowl faster than people thought I did, and I could make the ball break both ways, but not much. In my opinion, length and variation of pace constitute the secret of successful bowling." However, although he was regarded almost universally as "the high priest of length", he and Ted Peate together poured scorn all over suggestions that they were capable of "hitting the spot" with nearly every delivery (as was the common perception). Shaw's first-class bowling average is, by a quite substantial margin, the lowest of any bowler to have taken 2,000 or more wickets, but must be remembered that the pitches of the nineteenth century (particularly those at the start of his career) were far more bowler-friendly than they later became and are today. Still, this did not stop WG Grace from asserting that, between 1870 and 1880, Shaw was "perhaps the best bowler in England". Certainly, he was supreme among slow bowlers. For many years he was on the MCC groundstaff. In 1874, he took all ten wickets for the club in a