Page:Cricket (Hutchinson, 1903).djvu/110

60 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