These and other features of play require not only a fast and full movement, but also an independent control of the various muscles in various combinations, and a rapid start.
Fast and partial (or arrested) movements are scarcely less important. Thus the batsman must be able to draw certain strokes up with a sharp jerk, lest he send a catch; the bowler to alter his action by using some part of his mechanism only slightly; the fielder to let go the ball at the right point during the action of the throw. The feint at boxing and at all games often requires this partial or arrested movement of some muscles, and therefore, again, independent control of these as well as a rapid start.
Some movements will be fast, some less fast, some quite slow. One should control the pace.
This must all be with balance: he who has played forward must immediately be ready to run; he who has bowled, to catch or field or get behind the wicket; he who has run to field a ball, to throw it in. “The ready,” that is to say the most effective point de départ, must be lost either never or for the smallest possible fragment of time.
In the first class of movements we had extensions, say of the left arm in fielding, made fast and fully. Sometimes such extensions must be not only made, but also held, as when one stoops to field a ball with the left hand or stretches that hand out to make a high catch. At the end of this complete and sustained stretch there must be mastery of the mechanism: the hand must first yield slightly, then grasp safely.
Some strength is needed for forearm, wrist, thumb and fingers, etc. It is probable that strength is a quality to be acquired last, or at any rate after the rapid and ready and independent control of the muscles; lest prematurely elaborated strength and strain bring sluggishness and tardiness.
The numerous co-ordinations of muscles and muscle-groups (as outlined above, in the case of the forward stroke), must be under the sway of the well-timing eye which sends reports through the nervous system. Exercises are needed in observation as well as—to use technical language—in “quick and correct response to external stimulus,” in “immediate and happy selection of harmoniously performing muscular combinations.” To the accuracy of observation, and of choice of muscles, the senses of hearing and touch also contribute their share. Some expert players exercise them abundantly.
The imagination (based on the memory) must play an important part; aside from any picture-painting in the mind, of oneself as batting correctly but attackingly, bowling steadily but headily, fielding surely but briskly, one must have as a kind of background during the game the position of the wickets, the fielders, and so on.
It would be possible to classify the exercises differently. Thus we might consider, for example, running (ordinary starting and running forwards and backwards, sideways starting and sideways running forwards and backwards—no easy task—), jumping, bending, turning, lunging, stretching, and so on. There will be movements not only for the feet and legs and trunk, but also for the neck in various directions, for the shoulder (jerking and twisting), the whole arm, the forearm, the wrist, the fingers; if one studies three or four catches, one sees how many parts of the body are to be used.
But the feet and legs are the foundation. We hear much talk of the straight bat and the straight line of the bat’s movement; but the feet and legs, their positions, their poise, their motions—these are the roots of success in Cricket as in Racquets and Tennis. I attribute nearly nine-tenths of my mistakes at these games to-day to mistakes made by the feet.