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those that have time hanging all too heavily on their hands, and in good truth know not what to do—to those perchance that may, through lack of occupation, be compelled amid adverse circumstances, finding that anything is occasionally better than nothing, to peruse these jagged, untrimmed sentences—I would say this: that for many days, with a deep determination of purpose, I have perused the writings of our great cricketers—I have read the golden words of Grace, of Steel, of Ranjitsinhji—and have arrived hot-haste, sick at heart, at the conclusion that I cannot retell what has so often been told by them, and told so clearly, so succinctly, with such prodigious insight into the profound ramifications of this art. And so, like some pale-faced curate sitting fear-bound beneath the terrifying presence of a ruddy bishop, I must perforce scratch with a rusty pen of the bowlers I