Page:Cricket (Hutchinson, 1903).djvu/40

6 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 ot 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