Page:Cricket (Lyttelton, 1898).djvu/18

14 but with the medium dodgy bowler like Lohmann this is not by any means the case; if you hit at all wildly you will find it easy to mis-hit, and if you leave your ground the wicket-keeper finds it easy to stump you. Let the different principles necessary for playing fast bowling and slow be here briefly examined.

Before going further, it must be remembered that each age has its characteristics, and that what was deemed true and correct, and even indispensable, in old days, is now criticised and not acted upon by a new and sceptical generation. Formerly it was a universally received axiom that to fast bowling the right foot must be kept firm as a rock—not the whole of the right foot, for when you are playing forward, the tip of the five toes of the right foot only must touch the ground, the back of the heel pointing straight to the sky; but the whole of the right foot must never be shifted except when you move it across to cut. Be careful to distinguish between cutting and off-driving.