Page:Cricket (Hutchinson, 1903).djvu/153

Rh It comes naturally quick off the ground, and it comes along straight as a die, and many a batsman has ceased from troubling, out l.b.w., through playing for a break that did not exist. I should perhaps not have said ceased from troubling, for it is a curious fact, and one for which there seems no adequate explanation, that though a batsman generally grumbles a little at being given out l.b.w, to a fast bowler, a rara avis is occasionally found agreeing with the decision; men as a rule grumble and trouble themselves vastly being dismissed in a similar manner to a slow ball, and a rara avis in this connection is almost as the dodo.

Of Wells' fast ball I am perhaps not so eulogistic, but no doubt he uses it as an astute hunter uses dead wood and briars to cover the many pitfalls into which his intended victims are to cast themselves. This end or that end, he never tires; if the laws of the game permitted it he would bowl both; and as regards fielding his own bowling, I think he is the best I have ever seen. I remember once at Cambridge in the Long Vac. playing with him—I think it was against the M.C.C. I know the side included Shacklock and Barnes. The latter was batting, and Wells let go a slow full pitch, and poor old Barnes dashed at it as a dog at a dinner. Wells, as he generally is, was well up the wicket, his legs well apart, looking for what he could find. Barnes found the full toss, and Wells the ball. As the veteran passed me at mid-off, his face was as the face of a man who stoops to pick up a sovereign and finds a