Whether these exercises and general hints will help towards my end—towards a game better played all-round (in batting, bowling, and fielding), better watched, and so better enjoyed—experience must decide. But all will concede that these exercises are not less pleasant and wholesome than those of drill and dumb-bell and strain-apparatus; that they are far better adapted than these are as a preparation for the noblest of sports and for much of daily life itself, since they encourage not mere strength and vastness of muscle, but also full extensions in various directions, promptitude to start in any required direction, rapidity to carry the movements through, endurance to repeat them, self-control to keep or recover poise in spite of the fulness and rapidity and promptitude and unforeseenness of the motion; to say nothing of the corresponding mental and moral excellences. If the system demands only a few minutes each day then in so far as it is correct—and it will be gradually corrected as observations and criticisms pour in—it will prove well worth while, especially on wet days (which are not unknown in England), and in winter, for those who do not grudge many hours a day to Cricket itself with all its waitings and watchings and disappointments.
The system is the chief new feature of this book, which, however, does not by any means underestimate the equally essential coaching by schoolmasters and professionals and others, and net-practice and practice-games as an addition to the system and as the test of its merits or demerits.
These ought we to do, and not leave the other—the system which teaches this very alphabet of Cricket—undone, especially to-day when the majority of people are cooped up in cities without the chance of a practice-game or even of a net. The plea is not for uniformity of style, but for reasonable mastery of the spelling of words before we write essays; for a system of self-teaching and self-correction; for a system of training and practice when regular play is out of the question; for a drill which fathers and uncles may teach their children and nephews; for a healthy and interesting use of odd minutes which would otherwise be wasted or worse than wasted.
POSTSCRIPTS.
1. Mr. C. B. Fry’s advice in “Cricket” (just published by C. Arthur Pearson, in 1903) should be carefully read. He says: “To train his muscles for heavy weight-lifting is precisely what a cricketer ought not to do. . . . It is remarkable how much a player can improve himself . . . . by simply practising strokes with a bat and no ball or bowler. But this is easily understood when you perceive that the actual correctness of a stroke, so far as the movement of the feet and of the arms is concerned, is entirely independent of the ball. To make a stroke with the correct action and to time the ball are two distinct things; both are necessary in a match, and you can learn the second only with a ball bowled at you; but the first you can certainly to some extent acquire by mere chamber drill.
“It is also worth knowing that much may be done with a ball hanging by a cord from a beam or a tree. A little ingenuity renders practice at the swinging ball quite valuable.”
2. The death of Shrewsbury in May, 1903, has been a great loss to Cricket and cricketers. His enthusiasm, his mastery of certain mechanisms of batting, his calm confidence and patience, his gentleness and good nature, made him an almost unique personality in the world of Cricket.