Symptoms of a Loser of Runs.—He never follows up the ball, but leans on his bat, or stands sociably by the umpire; he has 20 yards to run from a state of rest, instead of 16, already on the move; he is addicted to checks and false starts; he destroys the confidence of his partner’s running; he condemns his partner to play his worst, because in a state of disgust; he never runs and turns, but runs and stops, or shoots past his wicket, making ones for twos, and twos for threes; he often runs a man out, and, besides this loss, depresses his own side, and animates the other; he makes slow fieldsmen as good as fast; having no idea of stealing a run for the least miss, he lets the fieldsmen stand where they please, saving both the two and the one; he lets the bowler coolly experiment with the wicket, when one run breaks the dangerous series, and destroys his confidence; he spares the bowler that disturbance of his nerves which results from stolen runs and suspicion of his fieldsmen; he continues the depressing influence of maiden Overs, when a Single would dispel the charm; he deserves the name of the “Green man and Still,” and usually commences his innings by saying, “Pray don’t run me out, Sir,”—“We’ll run no risks whatever.” When there is a long hit, the same man will tear away like mad, forgetting that both he and his partner (a heavier man perhaps) want a little wind left for the next ball.—O Ignavum pecus! so-called “steady” players. Steady, indeed! You stand like posts, without the least intuition of a run. The true cricketer runs while another is thinking of it; indeed, he does not think—he sees and feels it is a run. He descries when the fieldsman has a long reach with his left hand, or when he must overbalance and right himself, or turn before he can throw. He watches hopefully the end of a long throw, or a ball backed carelessly up.—Bear witness, bowlers, to the virtue of a single run made sharply and vexatiously. Just as your plot is ripe, the batsmen change, and an ordinary length supersedes the very ball that would have beguiled your man. Is it nothing to break in upon the complete Over to the same man? And, how few the bowlers who repeat the length from which a run is made! To repeat, passionless as the catapult, a likely length, hit or not hit, here it is the professional beats the amateur.—“These indirect influences of making each possible run,” says Mr. R. T. King, “are too little considered. Once I saw, to my full conviction, the whole fortune of a game changed by simply effecting two single runs; one, while a man was threatening to throw, instead of throwing, in the ball; the other, while a ball was dribbling in from about middle wicket. This one run ended thirteen maiden Overs, set the bowlers blaming the fieldsmen at the expense, as usual, of their equanimity and precision, and proved the turning-point in a match till then dead against us. Calculate the effect of ‘stolen runs’ on the powers of a bowler and his tactics as against a batsman, on the places of the fieldsmen, on their insecurity when hurried, and the spirit it puts into the one party and takes away from the other; and add to this the runs evidently lost; and, I am confident that the same Eleven that go out for sixty would, with better running, generally make seventy-five, and not uncommonly a hundred.”
Attend, therefore, to the following rules:—1. Back up every ball as soon as actually delivered, and as far as consistent with safe return. 2. When both men can see the ball, as before wicket, let the decision depend on the batsman, as less prepared to start, or on the elder and heavier man, by special agreement; and let the decision be the partner’s when the ball is behind the hitter. 3. Let men run by some call: mere beckoning with strangers leads to fatal errors, backing up being mistaken for “run.” “Yes,” “no,” or “run,” “stop,” are the words. “Away” sounds like “stay.” 4. Let the hitter also remember that he can often back up a few yards in anticipation of a ball passing the fieldsman. 5. Let the first run be made quickly when there is the least chance of a second. 6. Let the ball be watched and followed up, as for a run, on the chance of a miss from wicket-keeper or fieldsmen. So, never over-run your ground. 7. Always run with judgment and attention, never beyond your strength: good running between wickets does not mean running out of wind, to the suffusion of the eye and the trembling of the hand, though a good batsman must train for good wind. Henry Davis of Leicester was fine as ever in practice, when too heavy to run, and therefore to bat, in a game. The reason of running out and losing runs is, generally, the want of an established rule as to who decides the run. How rarely do we see a man run out but from hesitation! How often does a man lose his chance of safety by stopping to judge what is his partner’s ball! Let cricketers observe some rule for judging the run. There will then be no doubt who is to blame,—though, to censure the batsman because his partner is run out, when that partner is not backing up, is too bad. Let the man who has to decide bear all the responsibility if his partner is out; only, let prompt obedience be the rule. When a man feels he must run because called, he will take more pains to be ready; and, when once it is plain that a batsman has erred in judgment and lost one wicket of his eleven, he will, if worth anything, make a study of running, and avoid so unpleasant a reflection for the future. Fancy such a mem. as this:—“Pilch run out because Rash hesitated,” or “Rash run out because when the hitter called he was not backing up.”
These and many other ideas on this most essential, yet most neglected, part of the game, I shall endeavour to illustrate by the following computation of runs which might have been added to an innings of 100.
Suppose, therefore, 100 runs scored; 90 by hits, 4 by wide balls, and 6 by byes and leg byes—the loss is commonly as follows:—
Now, though I have put down nothing for four sources of loss, not the less material because hard to calculate, the difference between good runners and bad seems to be above half the score. That many will believe me I can hardly expect; but, before they contradict, let them watch and reckon for themselves, where fielding is not first-rate.
It was only after writing as above that I read that in “North v. South,” 1851, the North lost six wickets, and the South two, by running out! In the first Gentlemen and Players’ match, of the same year, it was computed that one man, who made a long score, actually lost as many runs as he made! In choosing an eleven, such men should be marked, and the loser of runs avoided on the same principle as a bad fieldsman. Reckon not only the runs a man may make, but the runs he may lose, and how the game turns about sometimes by a man being run out. A perfect cricketer, like a perfect whist-player, must qualify his scientific rules, and make the best of a bad partner—but, how few are perfect, especially in this point! Talk not alone of good batsmen, I have often said.—Choose me some thorough-bred public-school cricketers; for, “the only men,” says Clarke, “I ever see judges of a run, are those who have played cricket as boys with sixpenny bats, used to distances first shorter, then longer as they grew stronger, and learnt, not from being bowled to by the hour, but by years of practice in real games. You blame me because the All England Eleven don’t learn not to run out, though always practising together. Why, a run is a thing not learnt in a day. There’s that gentleman yonder—with all his fine hitting he is no cricketer; he can’t run; he learnt at a catapult, and how can a catapult teach a man the game?”
Great men have the same ideas, or Clarke would seem to have borrowed from Horace
“Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam
Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit.”