Engineers recreate 1900s cricket bowling machine PA Media The engineers had no drawings to use from when the contraption was made, only a black and white photograph and a patent application ...

The bowling machine was the brainchild of Dr John Venn and its recreation can launch balls towards a batter at around 33mph. Dr Venn, who died in 1923 aged 88, was president of Cambridge’s ...

Opening batswoman for the university's women's cricket team, Alice Bebb, 23, tested the machine. She said: "It's like no bowler I've ever faced before. "It was like a very tall bowler bowling very ...

The recreation of the bowling machine, designed by Dr John Venn in the early 1900s, was set as a challenge by Hugh Hunt, professor of engineering dynamics and vibration at Cambridge University.