Find out what are stimulants and narcotics, and let your third rule be this: never to become the slave of them; never to rely on them; above all, never to let yourself increase the quantity so that you have to add to the previous dose before anything “begins to count.” This is a practical counsel, rather than a counsel of perfection.
If you are against any great change, any experimentation, then let me give you some commonplaces, they are better than nothing. Keep to moderation in quantity; go early to bed, till you find the fascinations of a fresh head and body in the morning and throughout the day and many days to follow, greater than the fascination night after night of drinking, smoking, and cards; sleep with shut mouth, open windows, light clothes; rise or work early; clean yourself with warm water and friction; invigorate yourself with cool or cold water and friction, then with brisk full movements; relax your limbs for a few moments now and at bed-time; never have anxiety about anything; never have ill-feeling against anyone; add to this little repertoire all helps that are available everywhere, however poor you may be—not champagne, but air-and-light baths, massage, and so on. Be clean with mind and mouth as well as in body and limb; keep your physical vigour for play; study health, not morbidly, but sensibly; be able to box, and supplement Cricket with other games and exercises.
During the play, play with your whole heart and soul, as a member of a team, but as an important and special member. Concentrate not only while batting, bowling, and fielding, but while watching the niceties and learning new points, and also while practising at a net or in a room; as when you exercise yourself at starting in various directions, or at step-dancing (as Mr. C. B. Fry advises), or at fast extensions, such as stooping, or at throwing movements, or at bowling-movements. Concentrate as if there were nothing else at all in the whole world but to do each of these things very well—to do each of them better than any one ever expected you would be able to. Throw your nerve-power, your will and mind, your self, into your muscles, or, if you prefer, into their reflection in the looking-glass. Each pavilion should have a large mirror in it. At odd moments imagine different movements, different strokes—and especially when undesirable thoughts come, unless you have strength of mind to tire yourself out before sleep.
Perhaps you will never become very great at batting, though fair batting seems to me to be within the reach of most people who take the proper trouble; perhaps not very great at bowling either, though how most boys or men should expect to bowl while they have huge muscle-areas and tiny muscle areas so ill-controlled, I cannot tell; at least, however, you may become great at fielding—quick to start and run, sure to catch. Think what that needs—and practise accordingly.
So much for the attention when you are playing, practising, or training, and when you are idle or inclined to worse than idleness. Insist on complete concentration; recall again and again your wandering thought, your roving eye and inquisitive ear. Say to yourself, “This one thing I do now with all my heart.”
But apply that same concentration to whatever you do, if it is really worth doing, or has to be done. Let each thing in turn be the sole thing for which you were born. When other things are to be done, resolve not to do or think Cricket. I believe that this may prove an excellent cure for staleness.
The question of “staleness” has already been well discussed by Mr. A. G. Steel, Mr. Edward Lyttelton, and many others. In my own games I believe I am never stale now, and I attribute this blessing chiefly to my diet. In the “trinity of games,” Cricket, there need be no staleness through boredom, if only the player will cultivate all-roundness of play, and will prepare for and supplement his Cricket by good brain-work, simple exercises, and general health-culture. Much staleness is the result of excessive, or else badly-chosen, or else badly-used, or else deficient exercise, food, air, and so on; some is the result of the law of vitality and of victory, that energy and success shall not be level, but shall have tides; scarcely any, I believe, rests with Cricket itself. As more than one able writer has pointed out, a successful cricketer is, ipso facto, not stale.
I am reluctant to preach, but it is useless to edit a book on cricket without making clear to the reader that there is a problem for him to solve for himself. No one else can possibly solve it for him. The most I can do is to show my idea of the value of Cricket—the idea of one who has not excelled at it, but who has decided to practise it for all that it’s worth. What is it worth? On the answer will depend the answer to the question, “Is it worth much training?” For myself, I unhesitatingly say “Yes.” During the next two years I shall practise exercises for Cricket—for batting, bowling, and fielding; perhaps I shall not appear in any game or match at all till then. This must not be misunderstood. I shall focus my powers upon the exercises and practice, but before and afterwards I shall try to keep them and the game in proper perspective with reference to brain-work, character, the whole life. Others must do the same, and cultivate Cricket according as it shall seem likely to help with reference to these ends—not as first thing, I know; not as last thing, I hope, but wherever it shall aid the body-building and mind-building of a citizen of the British Empire and of the world. And let me add a word. I am not sure that you will ever find a more all-round exercise for the whole self, the whole man (including the “social animal” of Aristotle), than Cricket will be: it is not yet so, but will be if it is properly played and practised and trained for, if——
But if it is not properly done, if you don’t watch the game properly, trying to get hints for use; if you don’t ask for advice from the best professionals, experts, veterans, and spectators—they are the people; if you loaf in the field and will not be prompt to start and stretch and sprint and pick up and throw in, and safe “to have and to hold”; if you will not learn to bat with the help of your feet and legs (I don’t mean your pads), as well as with a straight bat and forward left elbow; if you will not do exercises without which you cannot tell whether you will be a bowler or not; if you will not train, or give up anything, or study health at all; or, on the other hand, if you will not work, and do not feel inclined to; well, then, I shall say, Cricket is not worth much to you unless you are a born cricketer and also a born all-round boy or man. At the most it is an open-air occupation with a certain value for health, hardihood, discipline, social intercourse, but not much even of a recreation. At its best its physical results may and probably must develop corresponding intellectual and moral results, if not in this generation and in this life, then surely in the next.