Page:Cricket (Lyttelton, 1898).djvu/96

92 CRICKET REFORM My readers may have become tired of the frequent use of the word "difficult" in what I have written, but I must perforce use the word again in writing of cricket reform. No reform is wanted in the summers when the weather makes the wickets soft and infavour of the bowlers, because what reforms may be said to be necessary for hard wickets ought to be in the direction of doing something to make batting less easy, and there is not the slightest necessity for doing this in wet years. The ideal to be kept in view is to arrive at some condition of things which shall ensure a sort of equality between attack and defence, and that condition of things is not found to-day. On soft wickets the batsmen appear to be impotent; on hard the bowlers appear to be similarly afflicted. We seem to have struck on a cycle of hard seasons, and the run-getting is so enormous that drawn games are beginning to be the