Page:Cricket (Steel, Lyttelton).djvu/233

Rh A school eleven, as indeed every other, only requires four regular bowlers. 'If you cannot win with four bowlers, you'll never win at all,' is an old and true saying. But this wants a little explanation. The four best available bowlers must be played without regard to their batting powers, and after these four have been selected let the team be filled up with good batsmen and fielders, quite irrespective of whether they can bowl or not. It is an excellent thing for a side that every man should be able to bowl a bit if wanted, and every boy should be able to do so, but it is only necessary in choosing the team to play four men as bowlers only.

Every school eleven should possess a lob-bowler; if he be a good one so much the better, but one of some sort there must be. Lobs have always been most destructive to boys, and even very indifferent lobs are occasionally very fatal to schools. A little practice will teach any boy to bowl them fairly; he must take a long and rather a quick run, and bowl just fast enough to prevent the batsman hitting the good-length balls before they pitch. The high slow lob is generally worthless.

The wicket-keeper must also be trained and coached. He should be taught the right and the wrong way to stand, and should practise keeping for a short time every day. And, above all things, the school wicket-keeper should know that for anything over slow and slow medium bowling he is to have a longstop. The number of good wicket-keepers who have been spoilt by having to perform the office of long-stop as well as their own is legion. There are no first-class keepers nowadays who put out their hands on the leg side and draw the ball to the stumps; they all jump to the leg side in front of the ball to prevent it resulting in a four-bye, and consequently, even if lucky enough to take the ball with their hands, they are so far from the stumps as to make it exceedingly difficult to knock the bails off.

A captain of a University team has not so much to do with training and coaching his team as a school captain. By the time men have reached their University eleven they have generally mastered the elementary principles of the game, and require