One day in the summer of 1909 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, novelist, physician and sports enthusiast, finally lost his patience with lefthanders. The date of this occurrence is not recorded. It’s tempting to think it may have had something to do with the final Test at the Oval, in which the Australians clinched the series thanks to a century in each innings by the lefthanded Warren Bardsley, though the evidence suggests the piece was written before that. Doyle, in the year he turned 50, was offering, in the September edition of Strand magazine, Some Recollections of Sport, and until he came to lefthanded batsmen, the tone was mellow and cheerful.

And then suddenly he turned and rent lefthanders. Lefthanders are accustomed to abuse — the word sinister comes from the Latin term for lefthanded. They have unfriendly designations hurled at them, such as cackhanded; and until recent times, many whom nature had built to write with their left hands were brutally forced to employ their right.

Yet in most walks of life it doesn’t make very much difference which hand you use. How many votes ever turned on the fact that James Callaghan, like Churchill before him, was lefthanded. One presidential contest in the US featured three lefthanders: Bush senior, Clinton and Perot. Yet lefthandedness in cricket somehow fosters resentment. Could this be envy? There seem to be more lefthanded batsmen at the top of the game than in the population generally.

But whatever his reasons, Doyle had had enough. It was time, he wrote, to abolish lefthanded batting. The lefthanded bowler, he felt, hurt no one (he had never seen Wasim Akram in action). But your lefthanded bat was a perfect nuisance, delaying the game and giving the field an immense amount of extra trouble, causing boredom among spectators.

“Why should he be permitted to do this,” Doyle demanded, “when he is in such an immense minority?” To impose an immediate ban would be wrong. Batsmen already playing the game should be allowed to continue, and his prohibition should be stalled for four years for the benefit of upcoming cricketers. But after that no new player batting lefthanded should be admitted to first-class cricket. Meanwhile, lads showing an inclination to bat this way could easily be trained to perform the other way round.

So many others who have lit up the game — Neil Harvey, Garfield Sobers, Graeme Pollock, David Gower, Brian Lara — might have been lost. Yet mention of Gower brings up a factor that Doyle failed to mention. Many successful lefthanders are really righthanded. The key is which hand they use when they’re throwing. If the dominant hand is the top one, a natural righthander may learn to bat left.

It works the other way too: the list of English test players who batted right but bowled left — including all-rounder heroes such as Hirst and Rhodes, is longer than that of righthanders batting left. But they are exonerated. It’s the left-batting breed, the Strausses and Cooks and Trescothicks, against whom Doyle, as a devoted believer in communication from the other side of the grave, is no doubt still trying to warn the authorities.

Guardian