Page:Cricket (Steel, Lyttelton).djvu/435

Rh Play is advertised to begin at 12. As a rule it does not begin till 12.15. Luncheon is at 2, and there is always three-quarters of an hour consumed by the meal and dawdling about afterwards. A side is got out say at 4.30; this means another interval of half-an-hour between the innings, and stumps are drawn at 6.30. This makes the actual time spent in playing cricket on a grand summer's day exactly five hours. On a second and third day play usually begins at 11.30, so an additional half-hour is gained, making sixteen hours' play for the three days. Who can wonder that this state of things causes so many drawn matches? Yet the remedy is simple. What possible objection can there be against beginning at eleven after the first day, and thus getting three hours' uninterrupted play before luncheon? Again, why not make a rule of the ground that spectators are not allowed to break into the ring when the innings is over, and that the game shall recommence after the wicket has been properly swept and rolled? That to prevent the spectators from walking into the ring is feasible is proved by the example shown both by the Yorkshire Committee at Sheffield, where the rule is in strict force on the Bramall Lane Ground, and by the Lancashire Committee at Old Trafford.

If this regulation of the ground is in force, the players will all be in the pavilion two minutes after the close of the innings, and the rolling of the wicket will have begun. Let there be a five minutes bell rung at the expiration of that time, and let the umpires then take up their position at the wickets. The rolling and sweeping need not occupy more than ten minutes, and directly the roller is moved off the wicket the two batsmen and the field ought to be in their places. The rule is perfectly easy to work, and there can be no reasonable argument against adopting it. After it had been in force for a month people would wonder that the old-fashioned waste of time had ever been permitted. The alteration, or rather the systematic carrying out of this one rule alone, will do as much to enable matches to be played out as anything in reason can; and that some rule is necessary seems to be evident from the following