Page:Cricket (Lyttelton, 1898).djvu/37

Rh a fixture at the end for Surrey, and whenever he played against the Australians. Just to compare a season's work in former days, I take a casual year, 1871, and I find that only two bowlers bowled over 6000 balls in a season, and they were both slow—Shaw and Southerton—and 1200 balls made a fair season's work for fast bowlers; while Richardson, with only two breaks of six weeks for the voyage to and from Australia, between May 1895 and September 1896, bowled 19,820 balls, quite apart from any scratch match and balls at practice, and all this at a great pace and with a long run. I do not believe any but slow and medium-pace bowlers can stand this, and grand bowler though Richardson was in 1896, he was better in 1895. As he has gone out to Australia again this winter, and has had to bowl in an abnormally hot season on the losing side, I feel very sure that he will never be the great bowler that he once was, and he is only twenty-eight this year. Too much bowling, then, on the one hand, and