Similarly in Tennis I have read and heard again and again the theory that the head of the racket must be kept above the level of the wrist, in spite of the common practice of Lambert and Latham. The truth here is that the wrist should be firm. So with the late cut: the theory that it is a wrist-stroke only is not altogether absurd—the wrist may play an important part even if it is kept nearly or quite rigid (the power and direction being given by the shoulder, forearm, etc.).
The reader must not misunderstand my contention. If I think that most experts do so-and-so, this carries little weight; if the experts themselves think that they do some other so-and-so, this carries little weight either. The question is what the experts actually do. If the reader after careful study of these or any other photographs and after careful observation of these or any other experts shall decide that the experts actually do something different, then let him practise that something rather than what I suggest. Only let him not confuse me with a doctor who prescribes all sorts of drugs with apparent confidence yet himself would not swallow a tithe of them. In a tentative and truth-seeking spirit I suggest only that which I shall myself use daily with heart and soul; and I shall suggest it only as deserving of a fair trial before condemnation. By their fruits ye shall know them; and so shall I. The fact that I am going to submit myself to such apprenticeship would show at least this—that I am convinced of the need of such apprenticeship for duffers like myself, and that, if I had a son of my own, I would put him through such an apprenticeship before he had much chance of falling into those bad habits under which I myself laboured so long and so unhappily. I should teach him to master, with me, elements not only of the language of his tongue, but also of the language of his whole body; I would practise, with him, many positions and movements and extensions of feet, legs, trunk, shoulder, forearm, wrist, and neck—to fit him for Cricket and other games. In some practices I should err. But here, as in matters of diet, I should treat him as I should like to be treated, teach him as I should like to be taught, were I in his place; teach him as I—for want of better knowledge—shall teach myself; urge him to do only what I myself have done or am doing.
It is simply in this spirit, in the spirit of an experimenting and enthusiastic fellow-learner, that I approach my readers—all except the genius-cricketers, unless these wish to be teachers also. As almost the only self-made Racquet player and Tennis player who knows every single step of his own slow journey out of a hopelessly dark jungle of hampering errors into a comparatively clear and light country, a journey elaborated during a very busy life of reading, writing, and teaching, I can speak with weight. I can honestly say that all my thousands of Racquet and Tennis foot-exercises, shoulder-jerks, body-swings, and so on, in bedrooms and elsewhere, have been well worth while; and that those which I am now doing and shall do for Cricket will be well worth while for many reasons, including physical development and personal appearance (I do not mind what others think of it so much as what I think of it!), health, enjoyment, and hope.
I only dare speak for myself, because games, and therefore practice for games, are to me so much of all that seems best—possibly far too much. To others a similar preparation and practice might be sheer drudgery and slavery. To me they are at their worst a discipline—which I know I need—and an invaluable lesson that much work must be done of which the results will not show for years, but without which the naturally unskilful person like myself may never be able to show any appreciable results at all.
Speaking for myself, I shall not be content with trying to learn batting. I want to bowl and to field and to watch, and to enjoy all these parts, and to do them well enough to avoid the look of boredom which I see on so many faces on the Cricket-field. My egotism in these pages will be pardoned because I am genuinely anxious to improve myself and others—our physique, our standard of play, our enjoyment.
Let me here answer two objections made by friends of mine to whom I have told my plan. The first has already occurred to most readers. It is that I shall never become a good cricketer. This was precisely what every critic with one exception, Smale, the late Racquet coach at Wellington College, bless him! asserted confidently about my Racquets and Tennis as well as my Cricket! My style was so bad as to be beyond hope. Smale told me many of my faults and, as I said just now, I went for them and “stuck to it” for month after month, with the result that in America, where people are quick to observe and detect faults, I was frequently told, not that my feet were always in the wrong position and unprepared, but that they were nearly always in the right position and prepared, in “the ready.” “I can’t catch you on the hop”—that was the common compliment. If I achieved this for Racquets and Tennis, if I made the (at first) utterly unnatural movements so easy, so habitual, so automatic, so sub-conscious, so nearly inevitable, that not one in a hundred people will now believe that I ever had any difficulty or serious fault here; then why not in Cricket also? And, if I can, then I believe any one can.
The objection may be put more mildly, it being held that I should only be a “laboured” player. But am I a laboured Racquet and Tennis player now? Is not the labour past? Are not the positions and movements now my very own? I can seldom convince people that they ever were laboured, that I once was among the clumsiest of all.
Or it might be asserted that though I mastered the individual parts of movements—no one dares to deny that I could do this—yet the parts would not work together. “The secret of playing forward is to throw all the full weight forward together.” Now, though I began each part of the Tennis stroke separately and mastered it per se, yet I regularly and habitually combine these parts into a unity to-day. Tennis certainly seems to me to need the full weight at the right moment: I am repeatedly told that I seem to use all my weight in my strokes. And, if here, why not at Cricket? I fail to see any radical difference, though I do see that my distance from the ball must be different: but that is what I intend to get over! I also see that I must not lift the ordinary ball; but with my left elbow well forward I hope to stop that defect in batting; even in Tennis I try not to lift the ball much more than is necessary.
The second objection is that the game is not worth this drudgery: this is the objection chiefly of those who do not play games, or who have played them well without apprenticeship, or who have played them badly without apprenticeship or else after bad apprenticeship. This objection I answer in another chapter. It is a personal matter, and depends on what the game (and success in it) means for the individual—what it does and will do for him. To me Cricket (and success in it) would mean a very important benefit for the whole of my life, just as Racquets and Tennis (and improvement at them) have already done, and in these I have not nearly come to the top of my game yet. As to drudgery, lists of battles and dates and names and places would be drudgery to me; so would weight-lifting and other strain-exercises; so would society at-homes; but fast full-movements and extensions, control of my weight and balance, for a few minutes each day, are not drudgery to me, especially if I am stripped and have plenty of air and light, and an ambition or two in view.
I should be sorry to see Cricket reduced to the level of a school study, but I should be still more sorry to see it given up altogether. Why has it decayed so much? Why is there this apathy even among the (ordinary) players themselves? We are wont to hear the blame ascribed to Lawn Tennis, Golf, Cycling, Croquet, and to the expensiveness of Cricket in time as well as in money. But to me it is patent that the real cause of the decay lies deeper, lies nearer home, just as the real cause of physical decay lies nearer home than in the murky atmosphere of a nerve-harassing city. The source is within ourselves.