CRICKET

TOSSING FOR INNINGS.

CRICKET

EDITED BY

HORACE G. HUTCHINSON

“DESIPERE IN LOCO”

LONDON: PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICES OF “COUNTRY LIFE,” TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. & BY GEORGE NEWNES, Ltd. SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C.

MCMIII

PREFACE

Surely it is sheer neglect of opportunity offered by an official position if, being an editor, one has no prefatory word to say of the work that one is editing. It is said that that which is good requires no praise, but it is a saying that is contradicted at every turn—or else all that is advertised must be very bad. While it is our firm belief that the merits of the present book—The Country Life Cricket Book—are many and various (it would be an insult to the able heads of the different departments into which the great subject is herein divided to think otherwise), we believe also that the book has one very special and even unique merit. We believe, and are very sure, that there has never before been given to the public any such collection of interesting old prints illustrative of England’s national game as appear in the present volume. It is due to the kind generosity of the Marylebone Cricket Club, as well as of divers private persons, that we are able to illustrate the book in this exceptional way; and we (that is to say, all who are concerned in the production) beg to take the opportunity of giving most cordial thanks to those who have given this invaluable help, and so greatly assisted in making the book not only attractive, but also original in its attraction. In the first place, the prints form in some measure a picture-history of the national game, from the early days when men played with the wide low wicket and the two stumps, down through all the years that the bat was developing out of a curved hockey-stick into its present shape, and that the use of the bat at the same time was altering from the manner of the man with the scythe, meeting the balls called “daisy-cutters,” to the straightforward upright batting of the classical examples. The classical examples perhaps are exhibited most ably in the pictures of Mr. G. F. Watts, which show us that the human form divine can be studied in its athletic poses equally well (save for the disadvantage of the draping flannels) on the English field of cricket as in the Greek gymnasium. The prints, too, give us a picture-history of the costumes of the game. There are the “anointed clod-stumpers” of Broadhalfpenny going in to bat with the smock, most inconvenient, we may think, of dresses. There are the old-fashioned fellows who were so hardly parted from their top-hats. These heroes of a bygone age are also conspicuous in braces. We get a powerful hint, too, from the pictures, of the varying estimation in which the game has been held at different times. There is a suggestion of reverence in some of the illustrations—a sense that the artist knew himself to be handling a great theme. In others we see with pain that the treatment is almost comic, certainly frivolous. We hardly can suppose that the picture of the ladies’ cricket match would encourage others of the sex to engage in the noble game, although “Miss Wicket” of the famous painting has a rather attractive although pensive air—she has all the aspect of having got out for a duck’s egg.

More decidedly to the same effect—of its differing hold on popular favour—do we get a hint from the spectators assembled (but assembled is too big a word for their little number) to view the game. “Lord’s” on an Australian match day, or a Gents v. Players, or Oxford and Cambridge, hardly would be recognised by one of the old-time heroes, if we could call him up again across the Styx to take a second innings. He would wonder what all the people had come to look at. He hardly would believe that they were come to see the game he used to play to a very meagre gallery in his life. But he would be pleased to observe the progress of the world—how appreciative it grew of what was best in it as it grew older.

Another thing that the collection illustrates is the various changes of site of the headquarters of the game, if it had a headquarters before it settled down to its present place of honour in St. John’s Wood. There is a picture (vide p. v) of “Thomas Lord’s first Cricket Ground, Dorset Square, Marylebone. Match played June 20, 1793, between the Earls of Winchilsea and Darnley for 1000 guineas.” With regard to this interesting picture, Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, in his catalogue of the pictures, drawings, etc., in possession of the Marylebone Cricket Club, has a note as follows:—“This match was Kent (Lord Darnley’s side) v. Marylebone, with Walker, Beldham, and Wills (Lord Winchilsea’s side). M.C.C. won by ten wickets. It will be noticed that only two stumps are represented as being used, whereas, according to Scores and Biographies, it is known that as far back as 1775 a third stump had been introduced; many representations, however, of the game at a later date show only two stumps.” No doubt at this early period there was no very fully acknowledged central authority, and such little details as these were much a matter of local option. The wicket shown in this picture does not seem to differ at all from the wicket in the picture of “Cricket” by F. Hayman, R.A. (vide p. 1), in the possession of the Marylebone Club, though the date of the latter is as early as 1743. Neither does the bat appear to have made much evolution in the interval. It is on the authority of Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, in the catalogue above quoted, that we can give “about 1750” for the date of the picture named “A Match in Battersea Fields” (vide p. 3), in which St. Paul’s dome appears in the background. Here they seem to be playing with the three stumps, early as the date is. Again, in the fine picture, “painted for David Garrick” by Richard Wilson, of “Cricket at Hampton Wick” (vide p. 375), three stumps are in use, and the bat has become much squared and straightened. Of course the pictures obviously fall into two chief classes—one in which “the play’s the thing”; the cricket is the object of the artist’s representation; the other in which the cricket is only used as an incidental feature in the foreground, to enliven a scene of which the serious interest is in the background or surroundings. But the pictures in which the cricket is the main, if not the only, interest are very much more numerous. A quaintly suggestive picture enough is that described in Sir S. Ponsonby-Fane’s catalogue as, “Situation of H.M.’s Ships Fury and Hecla at Igloolie. Sailors playing Cricket on the Ice.” In this, of course, there is no historical interest about the cricket (vide p. 392). The one-legged and one-armed cricketers make a picture that is curious, though not very pleasant to contemplate; and the same is to be said of the rather vulgar representation of the ladies’ cricket match noticed above. The “Ticket to see a Cricket Match” (vide p. 40) shows a bat of the most inordinate, and probably quite impossible, length; but we may easily suppose that the artist, consciously or unwittingly, has exaggerated the weapon of his day. Here too are two stumps only. We may notice the price of the ticket as somewhat remarkably high, 2s. 6d.; but it was in the days when matches were played for large sums of money, so perhaps all was in proportion (length of bat excepted, be it understood). There is a picture of the “celebrated Cricket Field near White Conduit House, 1787” (vide p. 17), which is named a “Representation of the Noble Game of Cricket.” It is a picture of some merit, and evidently careful execution, and here too the players are seen with bats of a prodigious length; so it may be that these huge weapons came into fashion for a while, only to be abandoned again when their uselessness was proved, or perhaps when the legislature began to make exact provision with regard to the implements used. In this same picture of the “Noble Game of Cricket” a man may be seen standing at deep square leg, who is apparently scoring the “notches,” or “notching” the runs, on a piece of stick. This at least appears to be his occupation, and it is interesting to observe it at this comparatively late date, and at headquarters. In the match between the sides led by Lord Winchilsea and Lord Darnley respectively, it is seen that there are two tail-coated gentlemen sitting on a bench, and probably scoring on paper, for it is hardly likely that they can have been reporting for the press at that time. England did not then demand the news of the fall of each wicket, as it does now. Nevertheless, that there must have been a good deal of enthusiasm for the game, even at a pretty early date, is shown conclusively enough by the engraving (vide p. 190) of the “North-East View of the Cricket Grounds at Darnall, near Sheffield, Yorkshire.” What the precise date of this picture may be I do not know, but it is evident that it must be old, from the costumes of the players, who are in knee-breeches and the hideous kind of caps that have been reintroduced with the coming of the motor-car. Also the umpires, with their top-hatted heads and tightly-breeched lower limbs, show that this picture is not modern. And yet the concourse of spectators is immense. Even allowing for some pardonable exaggeration on the part of the artist, it is certain that many people must have been in the habit of looking on at matches, otherwise this picture would be absurd; and this, be it observed, was not in the southern counties, which we have been led to look on as the nurseries of cricket, but away from all southern influence, far from headquarters, in Yorkshire, near Sheffield. To be sure, it may have been within the wide sphere of influence of the great Squire Osbaldeston, but even so the picture is suggestive. The scorers are here seated at a regular table. A very curious representation of the game is that given in the picture by James Pollard, named “A Match on the Heath” (vide p. 29). It is a good picture. What is curious is that, though the period at which Pollard was producing his work was from 1821 to 1846, the bats used in the game are shown as slightly curved, and, more notably, the wicket is still of the two stumps only. There are only two alternative ways of accounting for this: either they still played in certain places with the two-stump wicket, or else, which is not likely, Pollard was very careless, and no cricketer, and took his cricket apparatus from some older picture. I observe, by the way, that I have, on the whole, done less than justice to the ladies, as they are portrayed playing the game, for though it is true that the one picture is, as noticed, vulgar enough, there is another, “An Eleven of Miss Wickets” (vide p. 248), that is pretty and graceful. While some of the pictures in this collection are interesting mainly for their curiosity, or as being something like an illustrated history or diary of events and changes in the game, there are others that are real works of art and beauty, sometimes depending mainly on their expression of the game itself, and sometimes only using it as an adjunct to the scenery. Of the former kind, we must notice most especially the remarkable series of drawings by Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., which show the batsman in the various positions of defence or attack. To very many it will be a revelation that the great artist could lend his pencil to a matter of such trivial importance (as some base souls may deem it) as the game of cricket; but without a doubt that great knowledge of anatomy, which has been one of the strong points in all his paintings, has been learned in some measure from these studies, which also give it a very high degree of expression. There is a force, a vigour, a meaning about these sketches which are interesting enough, if for no other reason than because they show so vividly the inadequacy of the mechanical efforts of photography, when brought into competition, as a means of expression, with the pencil of a really great artist. You feel almost as if you must jump aside out of the way of the fellow stepping forward to drive the leg volley, or of the fearful man drawn back to cut, so forcefully is the force expressed with which the batsman is inevitably going to hit the ball (vide p. 67). One of the most charming pictures of those who have taken cricket for their theme is that which is lent by His Majesty the King to the M.C.C., and is styled “A Village Match.” It is by Louis Belanger, of date 1768 (vide p. 361). Charming, too, is the picture attributed to Gainsborough, “Portrait of a Youth with a Cricket-bat”; it is said to be a portrait of George IV. as a boy, but it seems doubtful. The bat here is curved, but hardly perceptibly; it shows the last stage in evolution before the straight bat was reached (vide p. 208). Our frontispiece is a jolly scene—the ragged boys tossing the bat for innings—“Flat or Round?” and the fellow in the background heaping up the coats for a wicket. We all of us have played and loved that kind of cricket. A wonderfully good and detailed picture is that of “Kent v. Sussex” (vide p. 137). It is a picture of a match in progress on the Brighton ground, and Brighton is seen in the background; in the foreground is a group of celebrated cricketers in the spectators’ ring, yet posed, in a way that gives a look of artificiality to the whole scene, so as to show their faces to the artist. Even old Lillywhite, bowling, is turning his head quaintly, to show his features. One of the most conspicuous figures is the great Alfred Mynn, who was to a former generation what W. G. Grace has been to ours. All the figures are portraits, and every accessory to the scene is worked out most carefully. The drawing is by W. H. Mason. Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane has a note on this picture: “As a matter of fact, this match, as here represented, did not take place, the men shown in the engraving never having played together in such a match, but they all played for their respective counties about 1839-1841.” Very delightful, too, is the picture that is the last in our book (p. 433), “At the End of the Innings”—an old veteran with eye still keen, and firm mouth, telling of a determination to keep his wicket up and the ball down “as well as he knows how,” and with an interest in the game of his youth unabated by years. A jolly painting is that of “Old Charlton Church and Manor House” (vide p. 415), with the coach and four darting past, and the boys at cricket on the village green. And last, but to many of us greatest of all, there is the portrait of Dr. W. G. Grace, from Mr. A. Stuart Wortley’s picture, which sums up a modern ideal of cricket that we have not yet found ourselves able to get past (vide p. 228).

There are other pictures, not a few, that we might select for notice, but already this ramble goes beyond due prefatory limits. There are the sketches in which the cricket is made to point or illustrate political satires. To do full justice to these, one would need to be well versed in the history (other than the cricketing history) of the period. But enough has been said. One could not let such a gallery of old masters go without an attempt to do the showman for them in some feeble way. They need neither help nor apology. They are good enough to win off their own bat.

In our modern instances we have been no less lucky: with Mr. Warner to bat, Mr. Jephson to bowl, Mr. Jessop to field, and the rest of the good company, we do not know that any other choice could have made our eleven better than it is; but after all, that is for the public to say; it is from the pavilion, not the players, that the applause should come.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CRICKET, AS PLAYED IN THE ARTILLERY GROUND, LONDON, IN 1743.

CHAPTER I

SOME POINTS IN CRICKET HISTORY

By The Editor

Cricket began when first a man-monkey, instead of catching a cocoanut thrown him playfully by a fellow-anthropoid, hit it away from him with a stick which he chanced to be holding in his hand. But the date of this occurrence is not easy to ascertain, and therefore it is impossible to fix the date of the invention of cricket. For cricket has passed through so many stages of evolution before arriving at the phase in which we find it to-day that it is difficult to say when the name, as we understand its meaning, first became rightly applicable to it. The first use of the name “cricket” for any game is indeed a matter entirely of conjecture. It is not known precisely by Skeat, nor Strutt, nor Mr. Andrew Lang. But whether the name was applied by reason of the cricket or crooked stick, which was the early form of the bat, or whether from the cross stick used as a primitive bail, or from the cricket or stool, at which the bowler aimed the ball, really does not very much matter, for all these etymological vanities belong rather to the mythological age of cricket than the historical. Neither is it of great importance whether cricket was originally played under another name, such as club-ball, as Mr. Pycroft infers, on rather meagre authority, as it seems to me, from Nyren. Nyren did not hazard the inference. The fact is that the form in which we first find cricket played, and called cricket, is quite unlike our cricket of to-day, so that we do not need to go seeking anything by a different name. They played with two upright stumps, 1 foot high, 2 feet apart, with a cross stump over them and a hole dug beneath this cross stump. The cross stump is evidently the origin of our bails. Nyren does not believe in this kind of cricket, but he gives no reason for his disbelief, for the excellent reason that he can have had no reason for his scepticism; and the fact is proved by the evidence of old pictures. He was a simple, good man; he never saw anything like cricket played in that way, so he did not believe any one else ever had. He did not perhaps understand much about the law of evidence, but he wrote delightfully about cricket. The fourth edition of his guide, which a friend’s kindness has privileged me to see, is dated 1847, some time after the author’s death.

THE ROYAL ACADEMY CLUB IN MARYLEBONE FIELDS.

A MATCH IN BATTERSEA FIELDS.

Yes, in spite of Nyren, they bowled at this cross-stick and wicket which the ball could pass through again and again without removing the cross piece, and the recognised way of getting a man out was not so much to bowl him as to catch or run him out. You ran him out by getting the ball into the hole between the stumps before he got his bat there—making the game something like rounders. Fingers got such nasty knocks encountering the bat in a race for this hole that bails and a popping crease were substituted—at least the humane consideration is stated to have been a factor in the change.

It is not to be supposed that even we, for all our legislation, have witnessed the final evolution of cricket. Legislate we never so often, something will always remain to be bettered—the width of the wicket or the law of the follow on. About the earliest records that have come down to us there is a notable incompleteness that we must certainly regret. The bowler gets no credit for wickets caught or stumped off his bowling. What would become of the analysis of the underhand bowler of to-day if wickets caught and stumped were not credited to him? But at the date of these early records all the bowling was of necessity underhand. Judge then of the degree in which those poor bowlers have been defrauded of their just rights. Whether or no the name of our great national game was derived from the “cricket” in the sense of the crooked stick used for defence of the wicket, it is certain, from the evidence of old pictures, if from nothing else, that crooked sticks, like the modern hockey sticks, filled, as best they might, the function of the bat. They are figured as long and narrow, with a curving lower end. There was no question in those days of the bat passing the four-inch gauge. They must have been very inferior, as weapons of defence for the wicket, to our modern bats—broomsticks rather than bats—more than excusing, when taken in connection with the rough ground, the smallness of the scores, even though the bowling was all underhand and, practically, there was no defence. The solution of these problems, however, is, I fear, buried in the mists of antiquity, and one scarcely dares even to hope for a solution of them, or the fixing of the date of the changes. There are other problems that do not seem as if they ought to be so hopelessly beyond our ken. In Nyren’s cricketer’s guide, one of the laws of cricket, therein quoted, provides that the wickets shall be pitched by the umpires, yet in part of his time, if not all of it—and when the change was made I cannot find out—it must have been the custom for the bowler to choose the pitch, for he records special praise of the chief bowler of the old Hambledon Club, that on choosing a wicket he would be guided not only by the kind of ground that would help him individually best, but also would take pains to see that the bowler from the other end had a nice bumping knob to pitch the ball on—for by this time “length” bowling, as it was called, had come into general use. Nyren’s words are that he “has with pleasure noticed the pains he—Harris—has taken in choosing the ground for his fellow-bowler as well as himself.”

In 1774 there was a meeting, under the presidency of Sir William Draper, supported by the Duke of Dorset, the Earl of Tankerville, Sir Horace Mann, and other influential supporters of cricket, to draw up laws for the game, and therein it is stated that the “pitching of ye first wicket is to be determined by ye cast of a piece of money,” but it does not then say by whom they are to be pitched, nor does this function come within the province of the umpires as therein defined. This, therefore, is the first problem which I would ask the help of all cricketing readers towards solving—the date at which the pitching of the stumps ceased to be the business or privilege of the bowler. It was the introduction of “length” bowling, no doubt—previously it was all along the ground—real bowling as in bowls—that forced them to straighten the bats. Mr. Ward, in some memoranda which he gave Nyren, and which the latter quoted at large, says of these bats, used in a match that arose from a challenge on behalf of Kent County, issued by Lord John Sackville, to play All England in 1847: “The batting could neither have been of a high character, nor indeed safe, as may be gathered from the figure of the bat at that time, which was similar to an old-fashioned dinner-knife curved at back and sweeping in the form of a volute at the front and end. With such a bat the system must have been all for hitting; it would be barely possible to block, and when the practice of bowling length balls was introduced, and which (sic) gave the bowler so great an advantage in the game, it became absolutely necessary to change the form of the bat in order that the striker might be able to keep pace with the improvement. It was therefore made straight in the pod, in consequence of which, a total revolution, it may be said a reformation too, ensued in the style of play.”

Then follows a record of the score of the match, which need not be detailed. England made 40 and 70, and Kent 53 and 58 for nine wickets, a gallant win. “Some years after this,” Mr. Ward continues—it is to be presumed Nyren quotes the ipsissima verba, for whenever he wants to put in anything off his own bat it appears above his initials in a note—“the fashion of the bat having been changed to a straight form, the system of blocking was adopted”—that is to say, some years after 1740.

The date is vague. Let us say early in the second half of the eighteenth century, and I think we may go so far as to say that cricket, as we understand it, began then too. It can hardly have been cricket—this entirely aggressive batting. The next date of importance as marking an epoch, if we may speak of the next when we have left the last so much to conjecture, is 1775. On 22nd of May of that year there was a great match “in the Artillery Ground between five of the Hambledon Club and five of All England, when Small went in, the last man, for fourteen runs and fetched them. Lumpy”—a very famous bowler baptized Edward, surnamed Stevens—“was bowler upon the occasion, and it having been remarked that his balls had three times passed between Small’s stumps, it was considered to be a hard thing upon the bowler that his straightest ball should be so sacrificed; the number of the stumps was in consequence increased from two to three.”

AN EXACT REPRESENTATION OF THE GAME OF CRICKET.

That is plain enough, but what is not plain is the height of the stumps at that time.

Mr. Pycroft puts the height of the stumps at 1 foot, with a width of only 6 inches, up to 1780, and it is evident from what Nyren says—(a) that he had never seen stumps of 1 foot high and 2 feet wide; and (b) that they were not of 22 inches high until 1775. Therefore here is evidence in support of Mr. Pycroft’s 1 foot high and 6 inch wide wicket, to say nothing of the unimpeachable value of his own statements. But he himself adduces nothing that I can find in its support, nor does he attempt to give us the date of the first narrowing of the stumps; and with regard to the alteration from two low stumps to three 22-inch stumps I am obliged to find him at variance with Nyren.

The point, therefore, that I want to light on is the date and circumstances of the change from wickets of two stumps 1 foot high and 2 feet apart, to wickets of two stumps 1 foot high, and only 6 inches apart. This very drastic change appears to have been accomplished without a word of historical comment upon it. There was a deal of discussion at the time of the introduction of the third stump about the probable effect on the game of this change, some arguing that it would shorten the game—that every one would get out quickly.

Mr. Ward took the opposite view, that it would lead to more careful and improved batting, and cites a remarkable match played in 1777 between the Hambledon Club and All England, in which, despite the third stump, England made 100 and 69; and Hambledon, in a single innings, made the wonderful score of 403. Aylward, who seems to have gone in eighth wicket down, scored 167, individually, notwithstanding that he had the mighty “Lumpy” against him.

Mr. Ward’s memoranda therefore give us some interesting facts.

So far as we can see back, the distance between the wickets has always been 22 yards, but up to about some time in the first half of the eighteenth century the wicket consisted of two stumps 1 foot high, 2 feet apart, with a cross stump, and a hole between them.

Later, this was changed for two stumps, first of 1 foot and then of 22 inches high, 6 inches apart, with a bail and a popping crease.

About 1750 “length” bowling was introduced, superseding the all-along-the-ground business, and nearly concurrently the bats straightened instead of curved. And I think we can scarcely say “cricket” began before that, whatever “club-ball” or “stool-ball” may have done.

In 1775 a third stump was added.

This last date, I know, does not agree with Mr. Pycroft, but I cannot quite make out what his original sources are. He writes: “From an MS. my friend”—he has mentioned so many friends in the previous paragraph that it is impossible to identify the one he means—“received from the late Mr. William Ward, it appears that the wickets were placed 22 yards apart as long since as the year 1700. We are informed also that putting down the wickets, to make a man out in running, instead of the old custom of popping the ball into the hole, was adopted on account of severe injuries to the hands, and that the wicket was changed at the same time—1779-80—to the dimensions of 22 inches by 6, with a third stump added.” So, on the authority of the “MS. received by his friend”—it may have been the very memoranda given to Nyren, for Mr. Pycroft has mentioned Nyren in the preceding paragraph—Pycroft cites Ward as lumping together the double change from the two low stumps to the three higher stumps in 1779-80, whereas, in his memoranda to Nyren, Mr. Ward distinctly names 1775 as the date at which the third stump was added.

Curiously enough, Pycroft must have known all about this, really, but it slipped his memory, for, a page or two further, we find him quoting almost Nyren’s or Ward’s words: “In a match of the Hambledon Club in 1775, it was observed, at a critical point in the game, that the ball passed three times between Mr. Small’s two stumps without knocking off the bail, and then, first a third stump was added, and seeing that the new style of balls which rise over the bat rose also over the wickets, then but 1 foot high, the wicket was altered to the dimensions of 22 inches by 8, and again, to its present dimensions of 27 inches by 8 in 1817.” Though I find all up to that point in Nyren, I do not find the italicised words, but I have no doubt they present the fact quite accurately. They tell us nothing, however, as to the date at which the wicket was first narrowed.

Another curious piece of information Mr. Ward gives us, by the way. “Several years since—I do not recollect the precise date—a player named White, of Ryegate, brought a bat to a match which, being the width of the stumps, effectually defended his wicket from the bowler, and in consequence a law was passed limiting the future width of the bat to 4-1/4 inches. Another law also decreed that the ball should not weigh less than 5-1/2 oz. or more than 5-3/4 oz.” Nyren appends a note to this: “I have a perfect recollection of this occurrence, also that subsequently an iron frame, of the statute width, was constructed for, and kept by, the Hambledon Club, through which any bat of suspected dimensions was passed, and allowed or rejected accordingly.” “Several years since,” says Mr. Ward, or Nyren, writing, as I presume, about the year 1833, so that perhaps we may put this invention of the gauge about 1830, or a little earlier. I wonder who has this iron gauge now. Has it been sold up for old iron?

That is a third very practical problem that one would like answered.

And is it not curious to see how the rules were made and modified to meet the occasions as they arose. The misfortune of that

Honest Lumpy who did ‘low,
He ne’er could bowl but o’er a brow—

in bowling so many times between the stumps of the too greatly blessed Small—whence the introduction of the third stump. And White with his barn-door bat, from “Ryegate,” as it pleases them to spell it, compelling the use of the gauge.

We are too apt to think of the laws as “struck off at one time,” like the American Constitution, instead of regarding them as something of slow growth in the past, that will have to grow, with our growth, in the future. We shall get into trouble if we regard them as something too sacred to touch and do not legislate as occasion arises.

We have altered them greatly since that meeting at the Star and Garter in Pall Mall in 1774, when they seem first to have been committed to writing, and by the end of the twentieth century it is likely that we shall have modified them considerably from this present form. We have a notion that our forefathers played the game in such a sportsmanlike manner, taking no possible advantage but such as was perfectly open and above-board, that they required scarcely any rules to guide them, but some sad things that the stern historian has to notice about the influence that betting had at one time on cricket—this, and also a sentence or two from these very memoranda of Mr. Ward, whom Nyren extols as the mirror of all cricketing chivalry—may show us, I think, that our cricketing forefathers had something human in them too. How is this for a piece of artful advice? “If you bring forward a fast bowler as a change, contrive, if fortune so favours you, that he shall bowl his first ball when a cloud is passing over, because, as this trifling circumstance frequently affects the sight of the striker, you may thereby stand a good chance of getting him out.” And again, a little lower on the same page: “Endeavour, by every means in your power—such as, by changing the bowling, by little alterations in the field, or by any excuse you can invent—to delay the time, that the strikers may become cold or inactive.”

A very cunning cricketer, this Mr. Ward.

Previously he had said: “If two players are well in, and warm with getting runs fast, and one should happen to be put out, supply his place immediately, lest the other become cold and stiff.” Now just compare these two last suggestions with each other, you will say, I think, that the last is fair and just and proper counsel, instilling a precaution that you have every right to take, but the former, according to the modern sense of what is right and sportsmanlike, seems to me to be counselling something perilously near the verge of sharp practice. You send your man out quickly, that the other may not grow cold, and what happens? Your purpose is defeated by the bowler and field purposely dawdling in order that the man may grow cold. It does not strike one as quite, quite right, though no doubt it is not against the rules. But it is tricky, a little tricky. And so again we draw a date, without his suspecting it, of a new moral epoch, from our invaluable Mr. Ward. About 1833, or a little later, we grew a trifle more delicate and particular in some small points of cricketing behaviour and sportsmanlike dealing. The betting, and the like evil practices at one time connected with the game, were a grosser scandal which carried their own destruction with them.

If any man, therefore, can throw light on these three dark points, I shall be very grateful to him—the date at which the first high wicket was narrowed down to 6 inches, the date at which the bowler ceased to have the pitching of the wicket, and the present habitation of that famous piece of old iron, the gauge used on the barn-door bat of White of Ryegate. Nyren, the matchless historian of the game, reveals himself, in his little history, as a very estimable man, of some matchless qualities for his task—an unbounded love of his subject and a sweet nature perfectly free of the slightest taint of jealousy. He writes of no other cricketing societies, except incidentally, than of those men of Hambledon in Hampshire. Quorum pars magna fui, as he says, with a single explosion of very proper pride, and a note appended thereto explaining apologetically that he has some certain knowledge of Latin. But after this single expression, very fully justified, for he was the beloved father of the Hambledon Club for years, he speaks of himself again hardly at all, just as if he had no hand in its successes, preferring to find some generous word to say of all the rest—of Beldham, Harris, Aylward, Lumpy. Beldham was not nearly so handsome to him, speaking of him to Mr. Pycroft. “Old Nyren was not half a player as we reckon now,” was Beldham’s verdict. However, the old man was fifty then.

At least he was a very good type of an Englishman and cricketer, whatever his class as a player, or he could never have written that book. And how much Hambledon may have owed to Nyren we can never know. As it is, Hambledon has the credit that Nyren specially claims for it of being the Attica, the centre of early civilisation, of the cricketing world. But there may have been other Atticas—only, like the brave men before Agamemnon, unsung, for want of their Homeric Nyrens.

The fact of the matter is, we know little but gossip of how the cricket world went before the year 1786, when Bentley takes up the running and records the scores. A sad fire occurred in the M.C.C. Pavilion—at that time the Club played where the Regent’s canal now runs, after being built out of Dorset Square—and burnt all the old score books—irreparable loss.

Mr. Pycroft made an excursion into the home of the Beldhams, and brought out much valuable gossip, along with the unhandsome criticism on Nyren. “In those days,” says Beldham—1780, when Mr. Beldham was a boy—“the Hambledon Club could beat all England, but our three parishes around Farnham at last beat Hambledon.”

“It is quite evident,” adds Mr. Pycroft to this, “that Farnham was the cradle of cricket.”

Something that Beldham and others may have said to Mr. Pycroft may have made this fact “quite evident” to him, but I cannot see that he has transmitted any such evidence to us. This much, however, I think we may say with confidence, that all that was best of cricketing tradition and practice in the south of England—that is to say, as far as was in touch at all with its influences—clustered in the little corner of Surrey in which the parish of Farnham is. But that is not to say that there were not other nuclei of cricket in the north and elsewhere, and I think there is evidence to lead us to think there were other centres, perhaps less energetic.

The “county” boundaries were not so rigid in those days. “You find us regularly,” says Beldham to Mr. Pycroft—“us” being Farnham and thereabouts—“on the Hampshire side in Bentley’s book,” and it is quite true.

Then, from this little nucleus, cricket in the south extended. Beldham had a poor opinion of the cricket of Kent at first. Crawte, one of the best Kent men, was “stolen away from us,” in Beldham’s words. Aylward, the hero of the 167 runs, was taken, also to Kent, by Sir Horace Mann, as his bailiff, but “the best bat made but a poor bailiff, we heard.” Sussex was a cricketing county from an early date, but Beldham had a poor opinion of its powers likewise.

The elements of the nucleus formed round Farnham were disseminated, as much as anything, by the support that certain rich and influential people gave the game. We have seen how Sir Horace Mann stole away Aylward. Other great supporters of the game were Earl Darnley, Earl Winchelsea, Mr. Paulet, and Mr. East—all before the centuries had turned into the eighteens.

“Kent and England,” says Mr. Pycroft, “was as good an annual match in the last as in the present century.” But in those days, as even his own later words show us, “Kent,” so called, sometimes had three of the best All England men given in, even in a match against “England.” They were not so particular then—what they wanted was a jolly good game, with a good stake on it.

“The White Conduit Fields and the Artillery Ground,” Pycroft goes on, “supplied the place of Lord’s, though in 1817 the name of Lord’s is found in Bentley’s matches, implying, of course, the old Marylebone Square, now Dorset Square, under Thomas Lord, and not the present, by St. John’s Wood, more properly deserving the name of Dark’s than Lord’s. The Kentish battlefields were Sevenoaks—the land of Clout, one of the original makers of cricket balls—Coxheath, Dandelion Fields, in the Isle of Thanet, and Cobham Park, also Dartford Brent and Pennenden Heath; there is also early mention of Gravesend, Rochester, and Woolwich. The Holt, near Farnham, and Moulsey Hurst, were the Surrey grounds.

THE GAME OF CRICKET.

THE CRICKET FIELD NEAR WHITE CONDUIT HOUSE.

But there was cricket further afield. In 1790 the Brighton men were playing, and in the following year we find an eleven of old Etonians, with four players given, playing the M.C.C. team; also with four professionals, in Rutlandshire. This M.C.C. team went on to play eleven “yeomen and artisans of Leicester,” defeating them sorely, and in the same year the Nottingham men met with a similar fate at the hands of the Club.

From these matches and their results we are now able, I think, to infer two things—first, that cricket had been played for some long while, not as an imported invention, but as an aboriginal growth, in these northern counties before these teams visited them from the south, and secondly, that the southern counties had brought it to a much higher pitch of perfection, for they could never have gone down so ninepinlike before any eleven of the Marylebone Club. Likely enough the inspired doctrine, of the straight bat and the left elbow up, of that gifted baker of gingerbread, Harry Hall of Farnham, had not travelled so far as the home of these northern folk, and in that case they would have been at a parlous disadvantage to those who had been brought up by its lights. They had not perhaps been so long in the habit of coping with “length” balls, which made the adoption of the left elbow up almost a necessity of defence. When the bowling came all along the ground it did not matter. Also there was in the south that prince of bowlers, Harris, whose magical deliveries shot up so straightly from the ground that it was almost essential for playing them to get out to the pitch of the ball. And if they had not this bowling, what was to educate them, unassisted, to a higher standard of batting? But they were not left unassisted, for the masterly elevens from the south began to come among them, and taught them many things, no doubt, both by example and by precept.

This was in 1791. 1793 brings a wider ray of light on the scene of cricket history. Essex and Herts come on the scene as cricketing counties—of second class, as we should call them now, to Kent and Surrey, but players and lovers of cricket all the same. They combined elevens apparently, and played twenty-two against an eleven of England, which beat them in a single innings. Mr. Pycroft has a specially interesting note in this connection. He was told by two old cricketers, one a Kent man and the other an Essex man, that when they were boys, cricket in both these counties was a game of the village, rather than of clubs. “There was a cricket bat behind the door, or else up in the bacon rack, in every cottage.” Of course in London it was a game played in clubs, for they only could find the spaces where land was valuable. It was in the year of 1793 that “eleven yeomen at Oldfield Bray, in Berkshire, had learned enough to be able to defeat a good eleven of the Marylebone Club.”

I am scandalised by the wholesale way I have to steal early history from Mr. Pycroft’s book. The only excuse is that I do not know where to go to better it, though probably I may supplement it from chance sources.

The LAWS of the NOBLE GAME of CRICKET.

as revised by the Club at S^t. Mary-le-bone.

From the Frontispiece to the Laws.

In 1795 he tells us of matches in which the captains were respectively the Hon. Colonel Lennox—who fought a duel with the Duke of York—and the Earl of Winchelsea. A munificent supporter of the game was my Lord of Winchelsea, and used to rig out his merry men in suits of knee-breeches, shirts, hosen, and silver caps. It was a kind of feudal age of cricket, when the great captains prided themselves on the powers of their retainers, and staked largely on the result.

“In 1797,” says Pycroft, “the Montpelier Club and ground attract our notice,” and then goes on to speak of Swaffham in Norfolk, as a country of keen but not very successful cricketers. Lord Frederick Beauclerk took down an eleven that appears to have beaten three elevens combined of the Norfolk folk, and that in a single innings. This Lord Frederick Beauclerk, with the Hon. H. and Hon. J. Tufton, got up the first Gents v. Players match in 1798; but though the Gents, after the generous fashion of the day, were reinforced by the three chief flowers of the professional flock—namely, Tom Walker, Beldham, and Hammond—the Players beat them. In the same year Kent essayed to play England, only to be beaten into little pieces, and in 1800 they began the new century more modestly by playing with twenty-three men against twelve of England.

For of course, after all has been said, the centre of the national game, as of everything national, was then, as now, smoky London. Lord’s Pavilion was then, as it had been since 1787, on the site that Dorset Square occupies now. In London the men collected who loved cricket, and had the money to bet on the game and to engage the services of the players. There were keener cricketers, more general interest in cricket, then than a little later in the century. Three to four thousand spectators sometimes came to see a match at Lord’s, and royalties sometimes took a hand in the game.

In the first years of the new century, Surrey was the great cricketing county. Only two of the All England eleven, Lord Frederick Beauclerk and Hammond, came from any other county. Hammond was wicket-keeper to the famous Homerton Club—“the best,” says Mr. Ward, quoted by Pycroft, “we ever had. Hammond played till his sixtieth year, but Brown and Osbaldestone put all wicket-keeping to the rout”—by the pace of their bowling, of course.

About the first decade of the century the counties seem to have been divided off more strictly, for cricketing purposes, than before. Hampshire and Surrey, as we saw, ran in double harness, the men of Hants helping Surrey in a match, and the Surreyites mutually helping Hampshire. But now they no longer play together. Broadhalfpenny and even Windmill Down have gone to thistles, and the gallant Hambledon Club is no more. Godalming is mentioned as the strongest local centre of the game, and in 1808 Surrey had the glory of twice beating England in one season. But in 1821 the M.C.C. is again playing the “three parishes,” Godalming, Farnham, and Hartley Row, and it is in the accounts of this very same year that we tumble on a dark and significant observation. “About this time,” said Beldham to Mr. Pycroft, “we played the Coronation match, M.C.C. against the Players of England. We scored 278 and only six wickets down, when the game was given up. I was hurt, and could not run my notches; still James Bland and the other Legs begged of me to take pains, for it was no sporting match, ‘any odds and no takers,’ and they wanted to shame the gentlemen against wasting their—the Legs’—time in the same way another time.”

“James Bland and the other Legs.” At this distance of time we may perhaps repeat the epithet or nickname, and even class a named man under it, without the risk of an action for libel. Perhaps even the term “Legs” did not imply all the qualities which attach to it to-day, but in any case it is surely something of a shock to come on the presence of these questionable gentlemen just casually stated, not with any note of surprise, but merely as if they were a common and even essential accompaniment of a cricket match.

Of course we knew quite well that our forefathers betted large stakes between themselves, often on single-wicket matches. This was a favourite style of match with Mr. Osbaldestone—the Squire,—because his bowling was so fast that no one, practically, could hit it in front of the wicket, and hits did not count for runs, in single-wicket, behind the wicket. In double-wicket matches he often “beat his side,” we are told—beat his own side—“by byes,” no long-stop being able to stop his bowling effectively. The chief check to the Squire’s career seems to have been the discovery of the famous Browne of Brighton, who bowled, some said, even faster. Beldham, however, made a lot of runs off the latter on one special occasion. This is a digression, into which the consideration of single-wicket matches for money—and is it a wonder we do not have more of them now?—beguiled me. But perhaps it is a good thing that we do not have them, for they may well have been the root and source of all the subsequent “leg-work.” The Coronation match is the first occasion on which Mr. Pycroft notices the “Legs,” in his order of writing, but lower down on the very same page he quotes some words of Mr. Budd, who shared, with Lord Frederick Beauclerk, the credit of being the best amateur cricketer of the day, relative to a match at Nottingham—M.C.C. v. Twenty-two of Notts—in which the same evil influence is apparent. “In that match,” he says, “Clarke played”—the future captain of the All England travelling team. “In common with others, I lost my money, and was greatly disappointed at the termination. One paid player was accused of selling, and never employed after.”

Mr. Budd must have done his level best to avert defeat, too, for Bentley records that he caught out no less than nine of the Notts men; but one paid player was accused of selling, and Clarke was on the other side! However it happened, Notts won. Mr. Pycroft also says that in old Nyren’s day the big matches were always made for £500 a side, apart, as we may presume, from outside betting. Nowadays a sovereign or a fiver on the ‘Varsity match is about the extent of the gambling that cricket invites. The James Bland referred to above had a brother, Joe—Arcades ambo, bookmakers both. These, with “Dick Whittom of Covent Garden—profession unnamed,—Simpson, a gaming-house keeper, and Toll of Esher, as regularly attended at a match as Crockford and Gully at Epsom and Ascot.”

Mr. Pycroft scouts the idea that a simple-minded rustic of Surrey or Hampshire would long hold out against the inducements that these gentry would offer them, “at the Green Man and Still,” to sell a match, and indeed some of the naïve revelations that were made to him by rustic senility when he went to gossip with it, over brandy and water, might confirm him in a poor opinion of the local virtue.

“I’ll tell the truth,” says one, whom he describes as a “fine old man,” but leaves in kindly anonymity. “One match of the county I did sell, a match made by Mr. Osbaldeston at Nottingham. I had been sold out of a match just before, and lost £10, and happening to hear it, I joined two others of our eleven to sell, and get back my money. I won £10 exactly, and of this roguery no one ever suspected me; but many was the time I have been blamed for selling when as innocent as a babe.” Then this old innocent, with his delightful notions of cavalleria rusticana and the wooing back of his £10, goes on to tell the means—hackneyed enough in themselves—by which the company of the Legs seduced the obstinacy of rustic virtue. “If I had fifty sons,” he said, “I would never put one of them, for all the games in the world, in the way of the roguery that I have witnessed. The temptation was really very great—too great by far for any poor man to be exposed to.”

There is a pathetic dignity about this simple moralising that contrasts well with the levity of his previous confession, but the state of things that it shows is really very disgusting. It is another tribute to the merit of this first of English games that it should have lived through and have lived down such a morbid condition.

“If gentlemen wanted to bet,” said Beldham, “just under the pavilion sat men ready, with money down, to give and take the current odds. These were by far the best men to bet with, because, if they lost, it was all in the way of business; they paid their money and did not grumble.” The manners of some of the fraternity must have changed, not greatly for the better, since then. “Still,” he continues, “they had all sorts of tricks to make their betting safe.” And then he quotes, or Mr. Pycroft quotes—it is not very clear, and does not signify—Mr. Ward as saying, “One artifice was to keep a player out of the way by a false report that his wife was dead.” It was as clever a piece of practical humour as it was honest. What a monstrous state of things it reveals!

And then Beldham, inspirited by Mr. Pycroft’s geniality and brandy and water, goes on to assure him—as one who takes a view which the majority would condemn as childishly charitable—that he really does not believe, in spite of all that has been said, that any “gentleman,” by which he means “amateur,” has ever been known to sell a match, and he cites an instance in which for curiosity’s sake he put the honesty of a certain noble lord to the test by covertly proposing selling a match to him. But though his lordship, who seems to have been betting against his own side, had actually £100 on the match, even this inducement was not enough to tempt the nobleman from the paths of virtue.

We will hope that no amateur did fall, and may join with Beldham in “believing it impossible,” but the fiction that they did was used by the Legs to persuade any man of difficult honesty to go crooked. “Serve them as they serve you,” was the argument, or one of the arguments, used. That “fine old man” whom Mr. Pycroft drew out so freely gives no edifying pictures of the players of the day: “Merry company of cricketers, all the men whose names I had ever heard as foremost in the game, met together, drinking, card-playing, betting, and singing, at the Green Man—that was the great cricketers’ house—in Oxford Street—no man without his wine, I assure you, and such suppers as three guineas a game to lose and five to win—that was then the sum for players—could never pay for long.”

That was their rate of payment, and that their mode of life—perhaps not the best fitted for the clear eye and the sound wind.

It appears that this degrading condition of cricket was brought to an end by its own excesses; it became a crying scandal. “Two very big rogues at Lord’s fell a-quarrelling.” They charged each other with all sorts of iniquities in the way of selling matches, all of which accusations, when compared with the records, squared so nicely with the truth that they carried conviction, and “opened the gentlemen’s eyes too wide to close again to those practices.”

Mr. Pycroft has a note on his own account about the match at Nottingham in which his informant confessed to him that he was paid to lose. There were men on the other side who were paid to lose too, but, perhaps because there were twenty-two of them, they could not do it, but won in their own despite.

It must have produced funny cricket, this selling of a match both ways, and Mr. Pycroft picked up a story of a single-wicket match in which both were playing to lose, where it was only by accident that a straight ball ever was bowled, but when it came it was always fatal. It reminds us of the much-discussed wides and no-balls bowled in the ‘Varsity match to avert the follow-on: but, thank heaven, there is no suspicion of fraudulent financial motives in even the queerest of cricketing tactics to-day.

It is truly wonderful how all heavy betting has gone out. Partly, no doubt, this is because men play more in clubs. When individuals used to get up matches the players’ expenses came very heavy; therefore they made the matches for a considerable stake to cover them, but the practice cannot have comforted the losers much. Nowadays the club pays players out of the subscribed funds.

Why the single-wicket game is all given up is hard to say, for it is an age of individual emulation, but we are content with the better part of the game of eleven aside. And when first was that number, which seems to have some constant attraction for the cricketer, introduced? We cannot tell. It seems usual from the dawn of history. Moreover, the length of the pitch was always, so far as the historic eye can pierce, twenty-two yards—twice eleven, and twice eleven inches was the height of the stumps when they were first raised from the foot-high wicket.

Mr. Budd told Mr. Pycroft of a curious single-wicket match in which he was something more than magna, even maxima, pars. It was against Mr. Braund, for fifty guineas. Mr. Braund was a tremendously fast bowler. “I went in first, and, scoring seventy runs, with some severe blows on the legs—nankin knees and silk stockings, and no pads in those days—I consulted my friend and knocked down my wicket, lest the match should last to the morrow, and I be unable to play”—on account of the injuries to his nankin knees, I suppose. “Mr. Braund was out without a run. I went in again, and making the seventy up to a hundred, I once more knocked down my own wicket, and once more my opponent failed to score.”

Another interesting match that Mr. Pycroft records was Mr. Osbaldeston and William Lambert against Lord Frederick Beauclerk and Beldham. Mr. Osbaldeston, on the morning of the match, which was fixed under “play or pay” conditions, found himself too ill to play, so Lambert tackled the two of them, and actually beat them. I am sorry to say I find a record of a little temper shown—perhaps naturally enough—in this match, as on another occasion, when he was bowling to that barn-door bat of the Hambledon Club, Tom Walker, by Lord Frederick Beauclerk; but after all, what man is worth his salt without a temper? And no doubt both occasions were very trying.

The date of these single-wicket matches was about 1820, which brings matters up to about the time at which a stopper should be put on the mouth of this gossiping and cribbing Muse of History, for we are coming to the days as to which men still living are able to tell us the things that they have seen.

A MATCH ON THE HEATH.

The LAWS of the NOBLE GAME of CRICKET

as revised by the Club at S^t. Mary-le-bone.

CHAPTER II

EARLY DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CRICKETING ART

By The Editor

When I first formed the presumptuous design of editing this work, it was my original purpose to divide this chapter into two parts, whereof the one should treat of the development of batting and the other of the development of bowling. But I very soon found that such a division would never do, for it would be a dividing of two things that were in their nature indivisible, from the historian’s point of view, the one being the correlative of the other, and the effects of the one upon the other being ever constant. Of course those effects have been mutual; the bowling has educated the batting, and in his turn, again, the batsman has been the instructor of the bowler. No sooner has the one changed his tactics at all than the other has changed front a little in order to meet this new attack. Naturally, perhaps, it seems that the bowler has the oftener taught the batsman, than vice versa; the aggressor, by a new form of attack, forcing on the defendant a new line of defence. I think it is the generally accepted view to-day that it is the bowling “that makes the batting,” but on the other hand one is inclined to think that the excellence of the Australian bowling, and also of their wicket-keeping and general fielding, is very much the result of playing on such perfect wickets that the batsman practically would never get out unless fielding, wicket-keeping, and bowling were all of the highest quality. Therefore, in that special instance it may rather be said that the batting, under specially favourable conditions of climate and wickets, has “made the bowling.” Of course the natural effect of playing on perfect wickets in matches that last as many days as you please has had its effect, and to us not altogether a pleasing effect, on the Australian batting, but this is scarcely the place to consider that feature of the case.

The first point of interest to notice is that Beldham is quite at one with us in attributing the advance in batting to the advance of bowling, notably to the wonderful bowling of Harris, which was of that portentous character to which the name of epoch-making is not misapplied, and Nyren is of the same opinion with Beldham, whom he considers to have been the first to play Harris’s bowling with success by getting out to it at the pitch.

We have seen, in another part of the book, that, setting aside the stool-ball, and the other legendary sports of the ancients, which were “not cricket,” the first game worthy of the name of cricket that appears in the dim twilight of history is the game they played at the beginning of the eighteenth century—say for simplicity’s sake in 1700. In 1700 and for some time later the wicket that men bowled at was formed, as we have seen, of two stumps, each 1 foot high, 2 feet apart, and with a cross-stump by way of a bail laid from one to the other. Between the two stumps, and below the cross one, was a hole scraped in the ground—the primitive block-hole. There was no popping-crease: the batsman grounded his bat by thrusting the end of the bat into the block-hole. Then he was “in his ground.” But if the wicket-keeper, or any fieldsman, could put the ball into the hole before the batsman had his bat grounded in it, the batsman was out. Observe, it was not a matter of knocking off the cross-stump with the ball, but of getting the ball into the hole before the batsman grounded his bat in it. It takes no very vivid imagination to picture the bruised and bloody fingers that must have resulted from the violent contact of the bat when there was a race for the block-hole between wicket-keeper and batsman.

And the bowling? The bowling of course was bowling, all along the ground, as in the famous old game of bowls. Very likely it was in some respects the best sort of bowling for the business. With a wicket only a foot high, anything between the longest of long-hops or the yorkiest of yorkers would have jumped over it. They found out this disadvantage later, when they began to bowl “length” balls, which, after all is said, must have been far the more puzzling for the batsman. And besides the chance of going over the wicket, there was also the excellent opportunity of going through the wicket, between two stumps set as far apart as 2 feet. Probably this occurred so often that it did not seem particularly hard luck. The batsman, more probably, deemed himself very hardly used if he did not get two or three extra lives of this grace.

And after all, though no records that I can find have come down to us from those times, it is safe to infer that the batsmen did not make an overwhelming number of runs. Had it been so we should almost certainly have heard of it by oral tradition, and Aylward’s great score of 167 at the end of the century would not have stood out as such a unique effort. Nor have we far to seek for the reason that the scores were not prodigious. Though the wicket was low, it was very broad, and a ball running over the surface of bumpy ground, as we may suppose those wickets to have been, would very often have taken off the cross-stump only a foot above the ground. Perhaps, even, at a foot high it was more assailable than at two feet by these methods of attack. Then too the weapons of defence—the bats, so to call them—are figured more like the hockey-sticks of to-day—“curved at the back, and sweeping in the form of a volute at the front and end,” Mr. Ward’s memoranda of Nyren say. Of course these were very inadequate weapons of defence, and in point of fact no defence seems ever to have been attempted. It was all hit. And for actual hitting of a ball always on the ground a bat of this shape may not have been so very ill adapted after all.

We do not know what the wiles of these old all-along-the-ground bowlers may have been. Probably they were fairly simple. Yet there is a significant word that crops up in the pages of Pycroft, that delightful writer, that almost inclines one to suspect these old-fashioned fellows of some guile. He constantly uses the expression “bias” bowling. He speaks of it, it is true, in connection with “length” balls, breaking from the pitch. But why should he have used the word “bias” unless it were in common parlance, and how should that singular word have come into common parlance unless from the analogy of the game of bowls, in which it is a cant term. In the game of bowls the bowls are sometimes weighted on one side, for convenience in making them roll round in a curve and so circumvent another bowl that may “stimy” them, to borrow a term from golf, from the jack; but sometimes—and this seems a more scientific form of the game—there is no bias in the bowl itself, but “side” can be communicated to it, by a finished player, with the same result as before. Now if it was the habit of these old-fashioned cricketers to bowl their “daisy-cutters” with bias on the ball, so that it would travel in a curve as it came along, the reason for the term as used by Pycroft is simple enough; but if this is not the explanation, the only alternative one is that the term first came into use—never having been mentioned in cricket before—for balls that broke from the pitch, wherein the analogy from bowls would be very far-fetched indeed, and the term altogether not one that would be likely to suggest itself. Therefore I think there is a likelihood—I claim no more for my inference—that these old cricketers bowled their underhand sneaks with spin on them, just as we often have seen them bowled—and a very good ball too on a rough wicket—in country cricket matches to-day.

Then we come to a change, and the date of that change appears to involve some of the highest authorities in a certain disagreement. But I am going to stick to Nyren, or rather to Mr. Ward’s memoranda as edited by Nyren, rather than to Pycroft, both because the former wrote nearer to the date of the occurrences treated of, and also because the latter—though I love and revere his book—seems to me to have lumped dates together in a certain scornful, contemptuous haste, as if they were scarcely worth a good cricketer’s attention. Nyren, or Mr. Ward for him, is more careful in his discrimination, according to my judgment as a grave historian.

According to Nyren, then, it was some time about or before 1746 that the stumps were both heightened and narrowed. From 1 foot they sprang up to 22 inches in height, and from 2 feet across they shrank to as little as 6 inches in width. A bail crossed their tops, and a popping-crease was drawn for the grounding of the bat, to the great saving, as we cannot doubt, of the wicket-keeper’s fingers. Still, however, unless Nyren was mistaken, there were not as yet but two stumps—virtually it is certain he was mistaken in declining to believe that the game ever was played with a wicket of 2 feet width, but that does not prove him wrong in another matter in which all the probabilities are in his favour.

We are not given any very clear reason for this change in the height of wickets, but we very quickly see its effects. Hitherto bowling had been all along the ground, the wicket being so low that it was almost necessary to bowl in this now derided fashion if it was to be hit at all. But a wicket 10 inches higher might have its bail taken off by a higher-rising ball, the higher-rising ball was found to be a more difficult one for the batsman to hit, the higher-rising kind of ball was thereby proved the best for the bowler’s purpose; in a word, “length” bowling, as they called it—the bowling of good length balls, as we should say—was introduced.

And now, all at once, the position of the unfortunate batsman was found to be a very parlous one indeed. For, remember, he had in his hand, to meet this bowling, a thing that had more resemblance to a hockey-stick than a cricket-bat. There is a certain “invisible length” which, as we all know, is extremely difficult to play with a modern square-faced bat and with all the science of modern theories of wielding it. How much more helpless then, as Euclid would put it, must the unfortunate man with the bandy-stick have felt when he saw coming towards him through the air a ball of that length which he knew would make it impossible when it reached him. Batsmen must have had a most miserable time of it for a year or two.

At length, out of their necessity was produced a new invention. It was about the year 1750 that the “length” bowling came into fashion, and very soon afterwards the form of the cricket-bat was altered to that straight and square-faced aspect which gave it a chance of meeting the new bowling—which was assailing comparatively new wickets—on equal terms. Obviously there ought to be some kind of relation between the shape of the bat and the contour of the wicket that it is concerned to defend, and the contour of the upright 22-inch wicket demanded defence by a straight bat—that is to say, at first, merely a bat straight in itself. The gospel of the left elbow up and the meeting of the ball with bat at the perpendicular had not been preached thus early.

CRICKET, “AFTER THE PAINTING IN VAUXHALL GARDEN.”

And I take it that virtually cricket, worthy to be called by any such great name, did not really begin before this. This game of trundling along the ground at a two-foot wide wicket, and a man with a hockey-stick defending it, is really rather a travesty of the great and glorious game. The origin of cricket it was, no doubt, and as such is to be most piously revered, but actual cricket—hardly. Consider that old print of a game in progress on the Artillery Fields, where the players are equipped with the curved bats, wear knee-breeches, and the wicket is low and wide, with two stumps upright and one across. There is not a fieldsman on the off side of the wicket—a significant fact in itself; but further, and far more significant, a spectator is reclining on the ground, entirely at his ease, precisely in the position that point would occupy to-day. There can be but one meaning to this picture—that such a thing as off hitting was absolutely unknown. Possibly it was difficult enough to hit to the off, even with the best intentions, off these bats like bandy-sticks; it is at all events certain that it was a style of stroke not contemplated by the gentleman reclining on the ground.

I have spoken above of the bat as an instrument of defence. So to style it when writing of this era is to commit an anachronism. The earlier cricketers, even of the straight-bat epoch, were guiltless of the very notion of defence. They were all for aggression, trying to score off every ball. The reason of this was, no doubt, in the first place that the idea of merely stopping the ball had not occurred to them—partly because the object of the game is to score, and because the bandy-stick style of bat must have been singularly ill designed for defence; but also there is this further reason, that chance was much more on the batsman’s side in the old days than it is now. Nowadays, if a ball is straight and the batsman misses it, it is a simple matter of cause and effect that the bails are sent flying and he is out. But with the wicket 2 feet wide, and no middle stump, this was by no means so inevitable. On the contrary, it must have been a very frequent occurrence for the ball to pass through the wicket without any disturbance of the timber. Even when the wicket was narrowed to 6 inches, there was still room for the ball to pass between the stumps, of which the fortune of the before-mentioned Small was a celebrated and flagrant instance. The old-time batsman was therefore not so essentially concerned with seeing that no straight ball got past his bat. He did not bother himself about defence. He gallantly tried to score off every ball that came to him.

Yet, for all that, his slogging was not like the slogging of to-day. He had no idea of jumping in and taking the ball at the half-volley. His notions went no further than staying in his ground and making the best he could of the ball in such fashion as it was pleased to come to him.

“These men”—the “old players,” so called in 1780—says Mr. Pycroft, quoting the authority of Beldham, backed by that of Fennex, “played puddling about their crease, and had no freedom. I like to see a player upright and well forward, to face the ball like a man”—at this time of day, the wicket had lately been raised from 1 foot to 2 feet high, but had for some while been only 6 inches wide, a small mark for the bowler.

Mr. Pycroft goes on, quoting Beldham again: “There was some good hitting in those days”—towards the close of the eighteenth century is the date alluded to, as far as I can make out—“though too little defence. Tom Taylor would cut away in fine style, almost after the manner of Mr. Budd. Old Small was among the first members of the Hambledon Club. He began to play about 1750, and Lumpy Stevens at the same time. I can give you some notion, sir, of what cricket was in those days, for Lumpy, a very bad bat, as he was well aware, once said to me, ‘Beldham, what do you think cricket must have been in those days when I was thought a good batsman?’”

This is instructive comment, as to the style of batting previous to 1780—that is the date that it appears we must fix for the change of style that brought batting in touch with modern theories. But by the way we ought to notice that Beldham spoke of the fielding as being very good, even in the oldest days of his recollection, and Mr. Pycroft is careful to add a note saying that this praise from Beldham was high praise indeed, and eminently to be trusted, as Beldham’s own hands were also eminently to be trusted, whether for fielding the ball on the ground or for a catch.

But with the year 1780 we come to a new era in the art of batting, associated more particularly with the name and art of a famous bowler, David Harris, the association being again an illustration of the truth, which has several times already been in evidence, that it is the bowling that is the efficient cause in educating the batsman—that it is the bowling that “makes the batting.”

“Nowadays,” said Beldham to Mr. Pycroft, “all the world knows that”—namely, that the upright bat and the left elbow up and forward is the right principle of batting—“but when I began there was very little length bowling, little straight play, and very little defence either.”

Beldham was a boy in 1780, and even before this, Harry Hall, the gingerbread-baker of Farnham, of immortal memory, was going about the country preaching the great truths about batting. May be he was but little listened to. At all events it is certain that until men had the straight bat to play with and the length bowling to contend with there can have been little opportunity or demand for straight batting.

“The first lobbing slow bowler I ever saw was Tom Walker,” Beldham says. “When, in 1792, England played Kent, I did feel so ashamed of such baby bowling, but after all he did more than even David Harris himself. Two years after, in 1794, at Dartford Brent, Tom Walker, with his slow bowling, headed a side against David Harris, and beat him easily.”

AN EARLY TICKET.

WILLIAM AND THOMAS EARLE.

And this Walker, by the way, was a wonderful fellow in more departments of the game than one. A terrible stick, but very hard to get out—very slow between wickets, so that one of the old jokers said to him, “Surely you are well named Walker, for you are not much of a runner”—a moderate jest, but showing the sort of man he was. Then he was “bloodless,” they said. However he was hit about the shins or fingers, he never showed a mark. Only David Harris, that terrible bowler, made the ball jump up and grind Tom Walker’s fingers against the handle of the bat; but all Tom Walker did then was to rub his finger in the dust to stanch the reluctant flow of blood. It is all very grim and Homeric. David Harris, rather maliciously, said he liked to “rind Tom,” as if he were a tree stem withered and gnarled. And it is a marvellous fact that a man of this character, whom you would call conservative to the core of his hard-grained timber, should actually have invented something new. But he did. He first tried the “throwing-bowling,” the round-arm, which was credited to Willes—probably an independent invention, and so meriting equal honour—many years after. Well may Nyren speak of the Walkers, Tom and Harry, as those “anointed clod-stumpers.” Harry was a hitter, his “half-hour was as good as Tom’s afternoon.”

And meanwhile what has become of David Harris? David Harris, it is said, once bowled him 170 balls for one run. And what manner of balls were these? Let us consider a moment a description of David Harris’s bowling culled from Nyren. Parts of it lend themselves to the gaiety of nations, and the whole description, if not very lucid, is full of terror. “It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to convey in writing an accurate idea of the grand effect of Harris’s bowling”—the effect, as a matter of fact, is conveyed a deal more clearly than the way in which it was produced. “They only who have played against him can fully appreciate it. His attitude, when preparing for his run previously to delivering the ball, would have made a beautiful model for the sculptor. Phidias would certainly have taken him as a model. First of all, he stood erect as a soldier at drill; then, with a graceful curve of the arm, he raised the ball to his forehead”—singular and impressive ritual—“and drawing back his right foot, started off with his left. The calm look and general air of the man were uncommonly striking, and from this series of preparations he never deviated. His mode of delivering the ball was very singular. He would bring it from under the arm by a twist, and nearly as high as his arm-pit, and with this action push it, as it were, from him. How it was that the ball acquired the velocity it did by this mode of delivery, I never could comprehend.”

Nor any one else either, for Harris was a very fast bowler. But I am inclined to think that there must have been some explanation to be discovered out of the fact that he was by profession—before cricket became his profession—a potter. With the strength of fingers that the potter acquires through working at his clay, he may have had the power of putting an amount of spin on the ball impossible for men whose digits had not gone through this course of training. In underhand bowling such as, after all is said, Harris’s must have been, the spin is almost entirely the work of fingers. The turn of wrist had little share in it; for one thing, it was forbidden to deliver the ball with the knuckles uppermost.

And so it may well have been that, whatever the pace with which the ball was propelled, by these singular and statuesque means, through the air, it may have carried so much spin as to leap up twice as fast off the ground, as a billiard ball with much side on will seem to gain twice as much life after touching a cushion. And all that we read of Harris’s bowling shows that the balls did come off the ground with tremendous speed.

“His balls,” says Nyren, in another place, “were very little beholden to the ground when pitched; it was but a touch, and up again, and woe be to the man who did not get in to block them, for they had such a peculiar curl that they would grind his fingers against the bat. Many a time have I seen the blood drawn in this way from a batter who was not up to the trick. Old Tom Walker was the only exception. I have before classed him among the bloodless animals.”

We have seen, however, that even from him Harris occasionally drew blood.

In Harris’s day it was the custom for the bowler to choose the wicket, and it was always his preference to have a bump to pitch on, and so help this rising tendency of the ball off the pitch. Of course this would be the recognised aim of a bowler of to-day, but it was not so recognised then, and indeed Stevens, nicknamed “Lumpy,” generally regarded as the second-best bowler to Harris of his day, always liked to bowl “o’er a brow” in order to make his balls shoot. The result was, as Nyren points out, that Lumpy—Lumpy of the honestly avowed preference for bowling “o’er a brow”—would hit the wicket oftener, but that more catches were given off Harris, though his balls often went over the wicket. But there was no manner of doubt as to which was the finer bowler. Harris was the man.

And now as to its effect on the batting. Notice these words of Beldham, for really they contain the kernel of the whole matter: “Woe be to the man who did not get in to block them, for they had such a peculiar curl that they would grind his fingers against the bat.”

And again he says the same in more distinct words: “To Harris’s fine bowling I attribute the great improvement that was made in hitting, and above all in stopping, for it was utterly impossible to remain at the crease, when the ball was tossed to a fine length; you were obliged to get in, or it would be about your hands, or the handle of your bat, and every player knows where its next place would be.”

MR. JAMES HENRY DARK.

(The Proprietor of Lord’s Cricket Ground, 1836-1864).

T. HUNT, OF DERBYSHIRE, d. 1858.

In this connection Mr. Pycroft writes as follows: “‘Fennex,’ said he”—“he” being Beldham again—“‘Fennex was the first who played out at balls; before his day, batting was too much about the crease.’ Beldham said that his own supposed tempting of Providence consisted in running in to hit. ‘You do frighten me there jumping out of your ground,’ said our Squire Paulet; and Fennex used also to relate how, when he played forward to the pitch of the ball, his father ‘had never seen the like in all his days,’ the said days extending a long way back towards the beginning of the century. While speaking of going in to hit, Beldham said: ‘My opinion has always been that too little is attempted in that direction. Judge your ball, and when the least overpitched, go in and hit her away.’ In this opinion Mr. C. Taylor’s practice would have borne Beldham out, and a fine dashing game this makes; only, it is a game for none but practised players. When you are perfect in playing in your ground, then, and then only, try how you can play out of it, as the best means to scatter the enemy and open the field.”

So says Mr. Pycroft, a very high authority, and one whose instructions to the batsman are very sound and worthy of the very highest respect. No doubt he is right in his cautious counsel—human nature is prone to err on the side of rashness—but he does not notice the indisputable fact that it is easier to meet the ball at the pitch, if you can reach it, than later—always supposing it is not a rank long hop. He is rather inclined to treat this principle of getting out to the pitch as a counsel of perfection, and perhaps it is more easily put in practice now that wickets are more perfect than in his day, though if you really go out far enough—and unless you can get so far as to command the ball, however it break, it is surely better not to go out at all—the most troublesome ball has not time to develop much of its dangerous eccentricity before you have met it. Of course there is always the chance of missing it, and then there’s the wicket-keeper’s opportunity.

But, all details of prudence apart, there is no doubt that we have here a totally new departure in batting, devised, as is usual, to meet some new requirements on the part of the bowler. A very kindly, genial, remarkably honest man—a really loveable man—was this potter, David Harris, though he did say, in chaff, that he liked to “rind” Tom Walker, and certainly he was an epoch-making bowler, for he made the ball come off the ground with an underhand action in the very way that is the study of our overhanders. He was a good sportsman too, and when he had the pitching of the wicket, tried to give Lumpy, at the other end, a brow to bowl over, while he chose for himself a brow to pitch against. No one ever seems to have hinted that Harris’s action was a jerk, though there were jerkers in the world in those days.

Beldham and Fennex, then, were the first to pick up the new style of going in to meet the pitch of the ball, and so prevent its jumping up “and grinding their fingers on the bat.” Hitherto there had been good hitting, but all inside the crease, cutting and drawing to leg. Small had his bat straightened for the special purpose of making the draw stroke better. But hitherto there had been no idea of driving a shorter ball than a half-volley. Now first was developed the idea of going in to drive the ball and of forward defensive play; and therewith, as I conceive, the batsman’s art became, in its principles, pretty much as Mr. Warner found it when his school coach began his education.

CHAPTER III

BATTING

By P. F. Warner

It has been said that good batsmen are born and not made, but my experience is rather to the contrary. There are certain gifts of eye and hand which all really good batsmen must possess, but I am strongly convinced that early practice and good coaching have a very great deal to do in the acquiring of all-round skill. A. E. Stoddart, whose retirement from first-class cricket has proved such a loss, not only to Middlesex, but to English cricket, is the only batsman who has attained to the first rank who did not start to play the game quite early in life, and he is the exception that proves the rule.

Any success I may have had as a batsman I attribute to my devotion to the game from my youngest days. Early rising in the West Indies is the custom, but so enthusiastic about cricket was I that I often got up at half-past five, so as to practise to the bowling of a black boy on a marble-paved gallery which provided the fastest and truest wicket I have ever played on. Even now I am ashamed to recall the number of broken window-panes I was responsible for, and many was the time that my black hero and I have taken to our heels, to be speedily followed by an irate nurse, who never failed to report the damage I had done to headquarters. But despite many a scolding, and prophecies that I should come to a bad end, I persevered in my wrong-doing, and to that perfect marble wicket and a good coach I owe the fact that I was seldom guilty of running away to square leg, a fault so common among boys. Therefore the first essential is a thoroughly good wicket to practise on, and a good wicket is not a difficult thing to obtain nowadays, what with the improved condition of grounds all over the country. And let me urge on every young cricketer the absolute necessity of practising in earnest from the very beginning. Endeavour to play at a net exactly as you would in a match, and if you are bowled out, try to feel almost as disappointed as if a similar fate had befallen you in a game. Pay attention to details, and if you make a bad stroke, notice where your mistake lay, remember it, and take the lesson to heart. But practise, practise, practise, and, if you are a keen cricketer, batting at the net may be made almost as enjoyable as batting in a match. Well, then, practise in earnest from the start of your career, and if possible get some keen and intelligent cricketer—not necessarily a great one—to coach you, but one with infinite patience and tact, who will occasionally give a word of encouragement, for an encouraging word and look do a greater amount of good than is generally imagined.

Having got a good wicket and a capable coach, see that a suitable bat is in your hand, and I strongly advise every boy to play with a bat suited to his strength and style; and here I may mention that it is a thousand times better to play with too light a bat than too heavy a one, for with too heavy a bat one cannot cut or time the ball correctly; besides, it is hardly possible to play straight with it, and a straight bat is the very essential of good sound batting. Giving the young cricketer a good driving and well-balanced bat, see that he puts on two pads, and at any rate one, if not two batting gloves. Thus equipped, he will be ready to take his place at the wicket, and the first thing our imaginary coach will have to teach him will be his POSITION AT THE WICKET. No fixed rules can be laid down as to the position a batsman should take up at the wicket, but undoubtedly the best advice that can be given is to take up the position most natural to him. The most popular way of standing is to place the right foot just inside the popping-crease, with the left just outside it, pointing towards the bowler or mid-off; but no two players stand exactly alike, and as I have said before, the most natural position is the best.

There used to be a difference of opinion as to whether a batsman should stand with his weight equally balanced on both legs, or on the right leg only, but nowadays the universally accepted theory is that the weight should be chiefly on the right leg. At any rate, W. G. Grace, K. S. Ranjitsinhji, C. B. Fry, and A. C. Maclaren are all of that opinion, and they certainly ought to know. L. C. H. Palairet’s method of standing at the wicket is generally supposed to be the model attitude, and another cricketer whose position might well be studied is R. E. Foster, who, like Palairet, stands straight, but with a slight easing of the knees, which helps him to get a quick start at the ball. Both these cricketers stand as near as possible to their bats, without being leg before wicket, and I am a strong believer in this, for the reason that the nearer one is to the bat the more chance is there of playing absolutely straight and getting well over the ball. I am quite aware that there are one or two first-class batsmen who do not play with a straight bat, but they are men of wonderful eyesight, and their success has not altered my conviction that a boy should be taught to play with a straight bat.

As for taking guard, it does not matter whether you take middle, middle and leg, or leg stump. I have taken all three in a season. It is a mere question of inclination.

The bat should be held, I venture to think, in the manner most natural to the batsman, but the most common method is with the left hand nearly at the top of the handle, and the right hand somewhere about the middle; but there is no golden rule on the subject, and G. L. Jessop, for instance, holds the bat with his right hand at the very bottom of the handle. But Jessop is a genius, and his method should certainly not be copied by the young cricketer, unless the style of play Jessop adopts comes quite natural to him; then by all means he should be allowed to cultivate it. I rather believe myself in holding the bat as high up the handle with the right hand as possible—that is to say, about an inch or an inch and a half interval between the two hands. This is the manner in which L. C. H. Palairet holds his bat, and I have always regarded and always shall regard him as the model for young cricketers to copy.

The first principle the coach has to instil into our young batsman is that he must never move his right leg backwards in the direction of short leg. He may move it to jump out to drive or to cut or to play back, but never should he move it away from the wicket.

This is the first point to be mastered by the beginner, for if the right leg is withdrawn away from the wicket, it is impossible to play with a straight bat, which, as I have said before, is the very essence of good batting. If a young batsman cannot refrain from running away, he should have his right leg pegged down.

BLOCK OR PLAY.

FORWARD PLAY.

The second principle to be inculcated is that a straight bat is essential to success in batting, though I do not mean to say that the bat should be held straight for every stroke, for the cut and the pull, for instance, are not made with a straight bat; but what I mean is that for defensive strokes, and in some scoring strokes, the bat must be held straight. A batsman who plays with an absolutely straight bat is nearly always a strong defensive player.

The third maxim is, watch the ball. Watch the bowler’s arm as he runs up to bowl, and then the ball as it leaves his hand. Watch it closely right on to your bat, and do not start with a preconceived idea of where the ball is going to pitch, and do not make up your mind to make a certain stroke before the ball is actually delivered.

Playing the Ball

All strokes may be conveniently divided into two kinds, back and forward, and back play and forward play may be further divided into back and forward play for defensive purposes and back and forward play with the object of making runs. I will deal first with Forward play, and I will imagine that a good length ball has been delivered on a hard, true wicket. To play this ball correctly the batsman should get his left leg well out in the line of the ball, and then bring his bat as close as possible to his leg. This is the secret of all forward play, and the young cricketer cannot be too often urged to “get the left leg well out to the bat” when playing forward. Care should be taken not to overbalance oneself, but if body, wrist, and legs work correctly, the ball may be forced past the fielder, and it is really quite extraordinary the power that may be got into the stroke. The position of the hands changes during the forward stroke, the left wrist being on the side of the bat away from the wicket before the stroke is played, and on the opposite side at the expiration of the stroke. The ball must of course be kept down, and in order to do this the left shoulder must be kept well forward, pointing in the direction in which the stroke is made, and the bat must be at such an angle that the top of the handle is nearer to the bowler than the bottom of the blade. The whole weight of the body should be brought to bear on the stroke, and the batsman must make the most of his reach, and the whole thing should be one action and in one motion. Tom Emmett, the famous old Yorkshire cricketer, who was our coach at Rugby during the five years I was there, was never tired of teaching us this stroke. In playing forward the bat must be quite straight, and at the moment of actual contact with the ball the bat should be just behind the left leg. Now that the wickets are so good, forward play is a very effective weapon both of offence and defence to have in one’s armoury, and it is therefore distinctly worth while for a batsman to acquire the highest efficiency in it.

The off drive may range anywhere from the left of the bowler to just in front of point, and the ball to be thus driven is one that is fairly well pitched up on the off side of the wicket, but not necessarily a half-volley. The great thing is to get well to the pitch of the ball, watch it, and not slash wildly at it. Care must be taken not to have a “go” at too wide a ball, for this is a favourite trick of slow bowlers, especially left-handers, and often results in an easy catch on the off side. There is one stroke, which is neither a genuine cut nor a genuine off drive, which may for convenience sake be dealt with here. The left leg is thrown out, as if the batsman were about to play a genuine off drive, but the ball is hit later than in the off drive, and with a horizontal rather than a perpendicular bat, the shoulders and forearm being brought into play rather more than the wrist. In some respects the stroke is very like the forward cut, of which I shall speak later, and many cricketers do not consider it an off drive, but rather in the nature of a cut. It is a useful stroke for a weak-wristed player. A good length ball on the off stump should be played in the direction of mid-off. A ball just wide of the off stump in the direction of extra cover, and a ball about a foot wide on the off side, should be played towards cover-point. The farther the ball is pitched outside the off stump, the farther ought the left leg to be thrown across the wicket, and the farther ought the left shoulder to be thrown forward. The wider the ball is, the more difficult it is to play, and a mistake common amongst beginners is that, without considering the direction of the ball, they advance the left leg straight down the wicket, just as if, in fact, the ball had pitched on the off stump, and not, for instance, a foot outside it. The left leg should be thrown across the wicket almost in a line with the flight of the ball. If the batsman plays forward at a ball a foot outside the off stump with his left leg straight down the wicket, he will find that the weight of his body will play no part in the stroke, and that should the ball break back he will be bowled out; therefore always remember to get the left leg well out to the bat, for apart from this being the golden rule for all forward play, there is an added advantage to be gained from the fact that, if the ball breaks enough to beat the bat, there will be little or no room for it to pass between the bat and the leg.

But in forward strokes, as in all other strokes, the great thing is to watch the ball carefully, for should you be playing forward with “your head in the air,” that is to say, not looking at the ball, which at the last minute does something unexpected, either bumping or hanging on the pitch, you will for a certainty find yourself in trouble; and therefore, until you are thoroughly well set and have got the exact pace of the wicket, there should be a margin for emergencies, so that it should be possible to alter one’s stroke at the last moment. The best way of playing a ball which one has gone forward to, and which one finds one cannot reach far enough to smother at the pitch, is to adopt the “half-cock” stroke. This stroke is made by holding the bat quite straight just over or slightly in front of the popping-crease and letting the ball hit it. It is a most excellent defensive stroke, and the proper way to play a ball whose length one has misjudged. W. G. Grace uses this stroke very frequently, as does F. S. Jackson. In making a forcing forward stroke the great thing is to swing the arms well and carry the stroke right through, which if well timed will send the ball very quickly to the boundary. Some batsmen play this forcing forward stroke so hard that it is difficult to distinguish it from a genuine hit, and I have a very vivid recollection of a grand innings of a hundred odd which A. E. Stoddart played at Lord’s for Middlesex against Kent some five or six years ago. The wicket was hard and fast, and the power with which Mr. Stoddart forced good length balls from W. M. Bradley to the off boundary was astonishing. In offensive forward play great care should be taken not to bend the right knee, for with the bending of the right knee comes the sinking of the right shoulder, and if the shoulder sinks the batsman is very likely to get under the ball. When a batsman who is a strong forward player is thoroughly well set on a hard, true wicket, many of his runs will come from off drives, especially if the bowling be fast or medium paced, and the power one can get into an off drive, if body, wrist, and eye are working together, is almost as great as in the case of a genuine hit. It requires no great physique to be a powerful off driver, for a man of very slight build, if he is timing the ball well—and by timing the ball I mean the harmonious working of body, wrist, and eye—can make the ball travel to the boundary as fast as a strongly and powerfully built man. There are few better moments at cricket than when one has forced a good length ball through the fielders on the off side, standing well balanced where one is, and the ball making haste to the ring. There is a very conscious feeling that brain, eye, body, and hand have all acted in concert, and that a great deal has been accomplished with a minimum of exertion.

Back Play

As soon as a batsman has made up his mind to play a ball back, the weight of his body should be transferred to the left leg, and the right foot should be moved back towards the wicket and the left leg drawn up to it.

Many writers on cricket have laid it down as a rule that the right leg should never be moved in playing back, which may be all very well as an elementary principle for a boy who is just starting cricket, but which, I submit, with all respect, is altogether wrong if applied to one who has got over the initial difficulties of the game. For myself, were I coaching a boy, I should tell him to move the right leg in playing back, though of course I would never allow him to move it away from the wicket. With a moment’s thought it will be seen that a batsman who moves his right leg towards the wicket must have a better chance of playing the ball correctly than one who stands with his right leg glued to the ground. In the first place, by moving back he makes the ball which he is shaping at shorter than it would have been if he had stood where he was by the distance that he stepped back. The ball is made shorter by two feet if the batsman moves two feet towards his wicket, instead of playing it where he originally stood, and the two feet more which in this case the ball has to travel gives the batsman so much the more time to judge and play it. Again, supposing a ball pitches on the off stump or just outside it, the batsman will assuredly play that particular ball more correctly if he moves his right leg across the wicket in a line with the off stump than if he keeps it firmly planted just off the leg stump. It stands to reason that if he moves his right leg across the wicket in a line with the ball, he will be nearer the direction the ball may take after pitching than if he adhered to his original position. Moreover, should the particular type of ball we are discussing break an inch or two from leg, the odds on his being caught at slip or the wicket are very great, should he not move his right leg across the wicket; whereas, should he bring his right leg across to the off stump and watch the ball closely after it has pitched, he will stand a far better chance of playing that ball in the middle of his bat than if he had remained with his right leg rooted to the earth. I well remember a very promising boy at Rugby, one who is now a county player, being nearly ruined by one of the cricketing masters insisting on his never moving his right leg, with the result that time after time was he caught at slip or the wicket, for the simple reason that he was too far off the ball when he played at it.

In playing forward, the golden rule is to get the left leg well forward to the direction the ball is taking, and the bat well up to the leg. The same rule applies in playing back. Get the right leg up to the line of the ball, and the bat as near as possible to the leg. The difficulty about moving back across the wicket is that the stroke requires considerable quickness of eye and foot, and quickness of foot is a point not half enough insisted on by the majority of coaches. All the best back players play back in this classical way—Victor Trumper, Ranjitsinhji, C. B. Fry, Tyldesley, A. C. Maclaren, and F. S. Jackson. If the ball in question breaks back into the batsman, he is equally well prepared for it, for he is well over the ball and better able to contend with the break, because more easily able to move his bat and get into position to play the stroke, than if he were standing firmly fixed on his right leg. Any one who thinks about the matter at all must see the advantage of playing in this way. It seems to me that in cricket the nearer the striker’s body is to the ball, the more likely he is to make a correct stroke, for the reason that his eye is nearer to the object he is striking at. If then a batsman keeps his right foot firmly fixed just off the leg stump to a ball which pitches on the off stump or a couple of inches outside it, his eye is necessarily farther away from that ball than if he moved his right leg across the wicket in the direction the ball is taking. I do not think this point can be insisted on too strongly by coaches. Besides, let any cricketer compare the two methods of playing back, and he will, I am convinced, find the one I have urged the easiest and most natural.

I am a firm believer in this method of playing back, not only because all the famous players use it—and that in itself were sufficient—but because from one’s own experience it has proved not only the easiest, but by far the most effective. By drawing back the right foot towards the wicket, not away from it, a batsman is often able to force the ball away between mid-on and the bowler, or between mid-off and the bowler, or between short leg and mid-on, the ball in the last instance being played away by a quick turn of the wrist at the last moment.

“It is a mistake to play back behind the legs, for it is impossible to put any power into a stroke when the bat is held nearer the wicket than the batsman himself is standing.” These are the words of K. S. Ranjitsinhji in the Jubilee Book of Cricket, and as Ranjitsinhji is about the best back player in the world, he ought to know.

It is comparatively easy to play back as a defensive stroke, but any one who aspires to be a really good batsman must learn to make his back play a means of scoring runs. On a difficult wicket back play is everything; in fact, it may be safely said that a good rule to bear in mind on a sticky wicket is to play back or hit.

A batsman, unless he be an experienced one, ought not to try and hook short balls round to leg, especially if the bowling is fast, but a “rank long-hopper” may be hit to any point of the compass with a horizontal bat; though, however short and bad a ball, it should be carefully watched all the way, in case of an unexpected hang or rise. Short and straight balls, if they do not get up to any height, may be flicked round on the on side by a quick turn of the wrist.

In making the hook stroke the batsman should move back towards the wicket, turn almost square to the ball, and hit with a horizontal bat to the on side. The ball should be watched right on to the bat, so that, if it does anything unexpected, an ordinary back stroke may be substituted. Even a very short ball outside the off stump may be hooked round to leg, especially if there are seven fielders on the off side and only two or three on the on side. Shrewsbury, Tyldesley, A. C. Maclaren, C. B. Fry, K. S. Ranjitsinhji, and Victor Trumper are, or were, very good at this stroke, which may be made, by using the wrists, with an almost straight bat. Men who play the stroke with their arms, like A. C. Maclaren, hit across the ball. To hook a fast bowler is a proceeding fraught with no little danger, and ought only to be indulged in very occasionally, for it is a stroke that requires no little skill and nerve, for often the ball comes shoulder or head high to the batsman. A. E. Stoddart was particularly good at hitting this type of ball round to leg. Indeed, all round there have been few finer players to fast bowling than Stoddart. On slow wickets the hook stroke is simply invaluable, and short straight balls may be despatched to the boundary quite easily.

The Back Glance

A ball rather short of a good length pitching just outside the leg stump should be played away on the leg side with a backward movement. The right foot is put well back in a line with the leg stump, and the left foot drawn up beside it, but different cricketers play the stroke differently. Ranjitsinhji, for instance, moves his left leg across the wicket towards point, faces the ball, and plays it at the last instant by a quick turn of the wrist. Other batsmen turn almost right round, and others get right in front of the wicket. The ball must be watched right on to the bat, and the ball should glance away somewhere behind the umpire, or in the direction of long leg. It is a most useful and fascinating stroke, and can be employed to balls pitching on the middle and leg stumps, especially to a break-back bowler, though of course there is a danger here of being given l.b.w.

The Forward Glance

A good length or slightly overpitched ball just outside the leg stump should be played in the following manner: The left leg should be thrown down the wicket in a line with the ball, and the moment the ball touches the bat, the bat should be pushed forward by a quick turn of the wrist, the whole weight of the body being put into the stroke. The body is thrown well forward, with the result that the ball will go round to leg at a great pace.

I have found this a very useful stroke to bowlers like Mold, Richardson, and Lockwood, who break back into one, and, as in the case of the back glance, the stroke may be made to a ball pitching on the middle and leg stump to a break-back bowler. At Lord’s it is a particularly effective stroke if one is batting at the end opposite the Pavilion, for the slope in the ground tends to accentuate the off break of any bowler who is on at the Pavilion end. Altogether it is a very productive stroke in first-class cricket. The back glance and the forward glance have practically taken the place of the leg hit, though, with the new-fashioned type of leg-break bowling as practised by Vine, Braund, Armstrong the Australian, and others, the genuine leg hit was more often seen last season than in some past years; but with six or seven men on the on side, it is extremely difficult to hit a leg ball without running the risk of being caught somewhere on the leg side, especially as the Braund type of bowler bowls a good length outside the batsman’s legs.

The square leg hit is made by advancing the left leg down the wicket, and hitting the ball just as it passes the left leg. It is either just before the ball pitches or on the rise, according to the length of the ball. It is a very difficult matter to keep the ball down, the complete success of the stroke depending upon perfect accuracy of timing. This hit ought only to be attempted to a ball short of a half-volley. If the ball is a half-volley or well up, the correct stroke is in front of the wicket or square to leg with a vertical bat.

THE DRAW OR PULL.

I am inclined to think that the glance stroke is preferable to the square leg or long leg hit, for it is quite as good for scoring purposes, and the ball can be watched right on to the bat, and placed and kept down with far greater certainty.

The Pull

differs from the hook stroke in that it is more in the nature of a drive. The pull stroke is used to hit a ball pitched outside the off stump round to leg, and the stroke may be applied either to a half-volley or a good length ball outside the off stump.

W. W. Read used to be the great exponent of this stroke, and Ranjitsinhji also plays it with wonderful certainty. It is a dangerous stroke, for the ball which can thus be treated requires very careful choosing, and it is the difficulty of choosing the right ball which makes the stroke dangerous. The left foot should be thrown out to the pitch of the ball, and just as the ball rises from the ground it should be hit round on the on side with a horizontal bat. It is often a very useful stroke on a sticky wicket, to a bowler who is breaking back, though there is some risk of being caught at deep square leg, rather in front of the wicket, by the fielder who is almost invariably placed there when the wicket is helping the bowler.

A straight half-volley is a ball which every player ought to be able to drive, and it should always be hit in the most natural direction. It is a mistake to try and pull a straight half-volley. The chief point to remember in hitting a half-volley is to get as much swing as possible into the stroke. One or two batsmen swing the bat so far back that they occasionally hit themselves with the back of the bat on the head. The shoulders should come greatly into play in the drive, for they give added power to the swing of the arms, and throw the weight of the body with great force on to the left leg at the moment of hitting the ball.

In driving, the back of the left hand remains facing the bowler, instead of being on the opposite side of the handle, as in the case of forward play. The bat, as in forward play, must be kept as near as possible to the left leg. Batsmen who are quick on their feet often jump out to the pitch of a ball, and thereby make it a half-volley. Victor Trumper, the finest batsman Australia has ever produced, is the great exponent of this stroke, and the rapidity with which he gets to the ball is astonishing.

It is, if successfully played, a very useful stroke, for nothing is more apt to put a bowler off his length than by thus attacking him. It is of course a stroke more suitable for slow bowling than for fast.

THE LEG VOLLEY.

THE CUT.

The On Drive

Nearly every batsman prays for a half-volley on the leg stump, or one pitching within three or four inches of the leg stump, for, if properly timed, it is a stroke which sends a thrill of joy through the batsman. If the ball pitches on the wicket, the hit should be made between the bowler and mid-on, though with a break-back bowler the ball may often be forced wide of mid-on’s right side. If the ball pitches outside the leg stump, it should be hit anywhere to the right of mid-on.

The whole body should work in agreement, the arms should swing freely, and the stroke should be well followed through. Nearly all the great batsmen play this stroke to perfection, but none better than F. S. Jackson.

The Cut

There are three classes of cuts: the forward cut, the square cut, and the late cut.

The forward cut is made at a shortish ball outside the off stump, the right foot being kept still, but the left foot brought across in the line of the ball. It is a stroke that requires very accurate timing, but when timed well, the ball often goes to the ring like a flash of lightning, somewhere between point and cover-point. W. L. Murdoch plays this stroke particularly well, as do A. O. Jones, H. K. Foster, and W. Gunn, while C. H. B. Marsham made the great majority of his fine 100 not out in the ‘Varsity match of 1901 by its means. It is a somewhat dangerous stroke, for should the ball hang or bump unexpectedly, an uppish hit will in all probability follow.

The square cut sends the ball just behind point, and is made by moving the right foot across the wicket in a line with the off stump; and just as the ball is passing the batsman’s body, the bat is brought down by a quick movement of the arms, while more power is added to the stroke by a sharp flick of the wrists. The bat should be slanting downwards towards the ground, in order to get well over the ball.

Tyldesley of Lancashire plays the same cut as well as any one else, though he often hits across the ball rather than over it, a fine stroke, harder than if he had got over the ball, being the result. His method is, however, a little dangerous, as there is a chance of the ball going up, though Tyldesley seems to have brought the stroke to perfection.

In the late cut the right foot is moved across to the same position as in the case of the square cut, but the ball is hit after it has passed the batsman’s body. The most suitable ball for the late cut is one pitched wide of the off stump, not quite so short as the ball for the square cut, but still short of a good length. It is essentially a wrist stroke, and a man with a weak wrist will be wise not to attempt it. Late cutting requires a little manœuvring-ground, and care must be taken to avoid cutting at a ball too near the wicket.

There are few players who cut late really well, for the stroke requires the greatest nicety in timing and a strong, flexible pair of wrists. Ranjitsinhji makes this stroke with great certainty and brilliancy, but then he possesses an extraordinarily supple pair of wrists.

There is another kind of cut, called the “chop,” which should be used to a short ball outside the off stump which keeps low after pitching. The bat should be brought down with great force horizontally, and if well timed the ball will go very hard. This is a favourite stroke of Sir T. C. O’Brien, K. G. Key, Victor Trumper, and R. E. Foster, who in the ‘Varsity match of 1900 brought off this stroke on several occasions off E. M. Dowson’s bowling. On a hard, true wicket, against fast or medium-paced bowling, forward play is the best; against slow bowling and lobs play back or hit is, generally speaking, the soundest advice that can be given a young cricketer, though on some wickets slow bowling may be played forward to, and even forced forward. But every really good slow bowler varies his pace. Five out of the six balls may be more or less of the same pace; but one ball out of the over is generally a fast one, or at any rate medium pace. Rhodes, the Yorkshire left-hander, bowls a very good fast ball, which comes across quickly with his arm, and the same may be said of Blythe of Kent and Cranfield of Somerset; while amongst slow right-handed bowlers C. M. Wells, for instance, is constantly varying the flight and pace of the ball. But in distinguishing the different styles of play which should be adopted in playing fast and slow bowling, it is well to remember that to fast bowling one plays forward to score runs, while to slow bowling you play forward to defend your wicket; though, as I have said before, a slow bowler may often be pushed forward between the fielders for one and two and sometimes four runs.

I do not think that batsmen jump out enough to slow bowling, for there is nothing so demoralising to a bowler as a batsman who comes out of his ground and hits when the ball is at all overpitched. Remember, if you do make up your mind to jump out and hit, to get right to the pitch of the ball; forget, too, for the moment, that there is such a person as the wicket-keeper.

When the bowling is fast enough to compel the wicket-keeper to stand back, I have found it a good plan to stand a foot or two outside the popping-crease. This tends to put the bowler off his length, for he finds his good length balls hit on the half-volley, and this, for the time at any rate, is apt to disconcert him.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BATS, WHICH BELONGED TO THE FOURTH DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH.

CELEBRATED BATS.

The one on the left belonged to Alfred Mynn, 1850; the centre one was originally used by Merser, of Kent (left-handed batsman); and the right-hand bat by E. Bagot, 1793.

In playing lobs you may stand in your ground and play back, occasionally scoring a single, but in dealing with lobs offensive tactics are the best, for, as a great general once said, “The best method of defence is to attack.” Lobs should therefore be either hit on the full pitch or played back, and the batsman should stand a little easier on his right leg than if he were playing fast or medium bowling, so as to be ready to jump out and take the ball on the full pitch the moment he sees that it is slightly overpitched. By far the best lob bowler of the present day is D. L. A. Jephson, the Surrey captain, for he varies the flight and pace of the ball extremely cleverly, often, indeed, sending in quite a fast good length ball. He can, too, make the ball break both ways, and many people think that he might with advantage to Surrey bowl more than he does.

Batting on a hard, true wicket and on a sticky, difficult one are two entirely different things, and one often sees a man who is a fine player on a fast wicket absolutely at sea when rain has ruined the pitch. A left-handed bowler like Rhodes is then in his element, for he pitches the ball a good length on the leg stump; it comes across quickly to the off, and you stand a very good chance of being either bowled, or caught by David Hunter at the wicket, or snapped up by eager and lengthy John Tunnicliffe at short slip. Haigh, also of Yorkshire, is an extremely difficult bowler on this kind of wicket, for the amount of off break he can get on the ball is prodigious; while Trumble, the Australian, is probably as hard a bowler to play under these circumstances as ever lived.

As a rule the hitting or “long-handle game,” as it has been called, pays best under these circumstances, but some men who are really strong in their back and on side play can play their ordinary game. A strong defensive back player can often get a good length ball which breaks back away on the on side for two or three runs, while a good puller has a great advantage on this kind of wicket. The man who does not watch the ball, and watch it well, will have little or no chance on a sticky wicket. At one time there were very few men who could play at all successfully on a really difficult wicket, but of late years, what with the general improvement in back play—due chiefly to Ranjitsinhji’s influence on the game—the number, though far from being large, has increased. Victor Trumper, F. S. Jackson, Ranjitsinhji, C. B. Fry, A. C. Maclaren, T. L. Taylor, and Tyldesley are the best batsmen we have under conditions favourable to the bowler, and I shall never forget an extraordinary innings Ranjitsinhji played at Brighton in July 1900 for Middlesex v. Sussex. When stumps were drawn on the second evening of the match, Ranjitsinhji was not out 37, the game up to that time having been played on a perfect wicket. Rain, however, fell heavily in the night, and with the sun coming out next morning, the wicket was altogether in favour of the bowler. Vine made 17, but no one else on the side that day got more than 5, excepting Ranjitsinhji, who was last man out, l.b.w. to Trott, for 202! He gave one chance in the long field when he had made about 160 runs, but apart from this, his batting was absolutely without a flaw. Most of his runs came from hard drives, chiefly to the on, and strokes on the leg side. It was an astonishing innings, and its full significance was possibly not appreciated until Tate, on an exactly similar wicket, dismissed a powerful Middlesex eleven for just over 100 runs.

WAR-WORN WEAPONS.

RELICS OF PAST ENGAGEMENTS.

A few words now on running. Never attempt a run if you feel any doubt as to its safety, for it is better to lose a possible single than to run out your partner. At the same time, I do not think that cricketers as a rule run as well as they ought to between the wickets. The Australians are an exception; they are extraordinarily quick.

Always back up two or three yards; when you call, call in a decided manner. If your partner calls you, run hard if you intend to go; if you do not, stop him at once. The great thing is to make up your mind instantly.

If you are the striker, and you play the ball in front of the wicket, always say something—either “Yes,” “No,” or “Wait.” If you hit the ball behind the wicket, your partner at the bowler’s end should call, but as to whether the striker or non-striker should call the hit to third man many cricketers differ. The best plan, in my opinion, is to arrange with your partner. In that event a disaster is not likely to occur.

Always run the first run as hard as you can, and always look out for a second run when the ball is hit to the long field, for even to a Tyldesley, a Denton, or a Burnup, good runners, who understand one another, may often with safety get two for a drive to the long field when a slower runner would be content with a single.

There are, too, very few third men to whom one cannot run. I do not mean to say that a run should be attempted to third man when the ball goes hard and straight to him on the first bounce, but for a stroke a little to one side of him there is frequently a run. But the two batsmen must use their own discretion—and as has been said, it is a thousand times better to lose a run than to risk running out your partner. I was twice run out in the ‘Varsity match of 1896—to a great extent my own fault in the second innings,—and since that game—memorable for the fact that Oxford, going in with 330 runs to win, hit off the number for the loss of four wickets, and for the no-ball incident which led eventually to an alteration in the follow-on rule—I have taken particular pains to improve my running between the wickets. I am not often run out now, and I hope I but seldom run my partner out—Experientia docet sapientiam.

Many batsmen, when nearing their 50 or 100, attempt the most absurd runs. This fault is more common amongst professional cricketers than amongst amateurs, for the reason that all the counties, with the one exception of Yorkshire, give their professionals a sovereign for every 50 runs they make. This so-called “talent-money” has been the cause of many a run-out. Yorkshire gives no “talent-money,” but over and above the usual fee of £5 or £6 a match, each professional is “marked” according to his work in a particular game. For example, if a man made 25 runs on a bad wicket at a critical time, or even 10 not out in a one-wicket victory, he would be marked according to the merit of his performance in the eyes of his captain—in this case Lord Hawke. A fine bowling feat or a fine catch would be similarly rewarded. Each mark represents five shillings, and this system might with advantage be adopted by other counties.

GEORGE PARR, THE FAMOUS NOTTINGHAM BAT.

“N. FELIX” (N. Wanostrocht).

There is one thing that no coaching will teach a young cricketer, and that is confidence. Time alone can give him that, for confidence is a plant of slow growth. I do not believe the cricketer who says he has never been nervous—he is certainly not a first-class cricketer if he adheres to that statement; but nervousness will gradually disappear as a batsman gains confidence in himself. I have known men who when they first played county cricket were almost paralysed with nervousness, but who after two or three years’ experience went out to bat with every confidence. Nervousness is undoubtedly a great handicap, and young players should try to overcome this weakness as soon as possible. Too much confidence is a mistake, for, to go back again to the Latin grammar, nimia fiducia calamitati solet esse. But too much confidence is better than no confidence—and by confidence I do not mean conceit, but a belief in one’s own capabilities, founded on past deeds.

There are cricketers, too, who are so superstitious as to be almost a nuisance. There is the man who thinks he cannot make runs unless he goes in in a particular place. These men are somewhat annoying, but I think a captain should always try to humour them, if by so doing he is not upsetting the batting order of his side.

The typical instance of superstition affecting one’s play at cricket seems to me to have been exemplified in the case of the Rugby boy who, alighting at the St. John’s Wood Station on the Metropolitan Railway, for the Rugby and Marlborough match, saw the advertisement of Mr. John Hare’s play, A Pair of Spectacles, staring him in the face. That boy had made heaps of runs during the summer at Rugby, but he came on to the ground fully convinced that he would make a pair of spectacles, and make them he did.

Again, G. O. Smith, to whose splendid batting Oxford were mainly indebted for their victory over Cambridge in 1896, had a firm conviction that he could only make runs in a certain pair of trousers; and G. J. Mordaunt, the Oxford captain of the previous year, took it as an evil omen, when, on awaking on the morning of the ‘Varsity match, he saw from his bedroom window the flag with “Druce” in large letters on it flying from the Baker Street Bazaar. W. E. Druce was captain of the Light Blue eleven that year, and Mordaunt’s feeling of coming disaster was, I regret to say, justified by the result of the match, for Cambridge beat us by 134 runs.

Coaches should be careful to avoid cramping the style of a young batsman, and of suppressing individuality and budding genius. Batsmen cannot be all of one type. Had G. L. Jessop been made to play according to the rules laid down, a great hitter would have been lost to the world, and England would never have won that last test-match at the Oval, for there would have been no Jessop on the side to accomplish what was, perhaps, the finest piece of hitting ever seen on a cricket-ground. It is useless trying to make a Barlow into a Lyons, or a Lyons into a Barlow.

Always endeavour to reach the ground in good time before a match begins, and to have five or ten minutes’ practice; though there are some batsmen who do not believe in too much net practice. Every man must of course decide what suits himself best, but I cannot believe that a few minutes at a net can do anything but good, for one gains a sight of the ball, and gets the pace of the wicket.

If you are put in to bat anywhere but first, always remember that it is your duty not to take more than two minutes in getting to the wicket, for that is the limit allowed by law. This is most important, for you have no right to keep your partner waiting, and to waste time.

No one will ever become a great batsman without enthusiasm, and enthusiasm of the kind which will carry him through the inevitable disappointments and troubles of his early career. The path to success is not easy, and success comes only to the few. But the goal once reached, he must be a poor man indeed who does not feel a glow of pride on seeing the magic figures 100 going up on the big scoring-board at Lord’s beneath his name; for believe me, the satisfaction is so great, and the applause such sweet music, that it is worth while taking the greatest pains to attain the proficiency necessary to the achievement of the feat. There is, too, a subtle charm and fascination about the game which creates among its devotees a bond of fellowship and camaraderie which nothing can alter.