Page:Cricket, by WG Grace.djvu/299

 keeper alive could have done better, or stood the wear and tear of the task so well. He represented the Gentlemen in 1874 and 1875.

As a batsman he used to have good defence, and could hit; but he is about the most casual player I know. At the Oval, when Gloucestershire met Surrey in 1876, he played at a ball on the leg side, and missed it. Without looking to see if Pooley had stopped the ball, he quietly stepped out of his ground, and was stumped. He had got into his head that such a ball ought to go to the boundary. We chaffed him over it, but he did not mind, and when he telegraphed the score home that evening, he coolly added: "I was magnificently stumped off a leg-shooter!"

In a match at Kadina, South Australia, he was bowled first ball; but he quietly put on the bail again, and said, "he never could play a 'trial ball,' and wished the cricket authorities would put their foot down and expunge it from the rules." He gained his point, and resumed batting.

But on another occasion, at Castlemaine, the laugh went against him. We had only a few runs to get to win, and I sent him in first on a bumpy wicket. He insisted on having the first ball, and told his partner he was going to run everything. The first ball was a shooter, and just grazed the leg stump, the bail falling quietly down. His partner, not noticing it, yelled, "Come on, Frizzy!" But after they had run three, the wicket-keeper and bowler, to his disgust, pointed to the wicket, and asked "if it was a running match." In the same match he kept wicket splendidly; but the umpire, not quite sympathising with his display, declined to give a man out, on the ground that the tip of his nose was just over the wicket, and that it was an infringement of the laws.

was born at Godalming, Surrey, March, 1830. His height was 5 ft. 7½ in.; weight,