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34 glorious wickets on the other, have, I think, rather knocked the bowlers' hearts to pieces. We have had a cycle of dry years; matches run into three days; the prominent cricketers have often to travel all or part of a night to begin another three days' match. It is too much for them, and if bowlers of a former generation had had this amount of work to do, they could not have lasted in the way they did. But two or three wet seasons, like 1888 and 1890, would bring about a very different state of things.

I am no laudator temporis acti. I believe that, given the same wickets, our bowlers would be able to prove themselves every bit as good as the giants of old; and in one particular there can be no doubt that bowlers of the present day are far superior to those of the former generations, and that is in accuracy. To take one illustration, no bowler bowls a ball to leg now. The batsman, if he wants to hit in that direction, must pull a straight ball. This might have been the case with the old slow bowlers,