Page:Cricket (Steel, Lyttelton).djvu/142

120 twist at all, and this should not always be straight. If a batsman has been playing over after over nothing but good-length 'off break,' a ball pitched about the same spot, two or three inches outside the off stump, and without any off break at all, will very often be found to go to hand in the slips, because the batsman is expecting the break and plays inside the ball.

The fast 'off break' is a most deadly ball; but, owing to the difficulty, as before mentioned, of imparting any great amount of spin to a fast ball, it is but rarely that a bowler can deliver it with any degree of certainty, except when the conditions of the ground are extremely favourable. A slight slope in the ground from the off side is always a great