Page:Cricket (Steel, Lyttelton).djvu/83

Rh ground at the same time as the ball with a great power of wrist. It is useless for anybody to hope to cut well unless he has both a strong wrist and also a quick eye to judge the correct second wherein to hit the ball—in other words, a power of timing the ball; the latter no book can teach, and the former cannot even be acquired by practice, which the second in some instances can.

The question now arises. What is the player with a weak wrist to do with a ball that a strong-wristed man cuts? Some would say that if he cannot cut in the orthodox vigorous way he ought at any rate to go as near to it as he can, and if he cannot make a clean cut for four, at least he should content himself with two. We think, however, there is for such players a more excellent way. In the cut we have been describing the right foot is shifted across: suppose the player now moves his left foot, not across, but simply straight forward to a ball that is in every way suitable to cut; let him then wait till the ball has gone just past his body, and then hit it with the full force of his arms and shoulders and with as much wrist as he has got. The ball will naturally go in the same direction as the orthodox cut, and quite as hard. The player must stand upright, and must especially be careful not to hit the ball before it has passed his body. If he does this off a fast long hop, he will bring off a vulgar sort of stroke, which cannot go so hard as the ball hit later, because there is greater resistance to the bat; in the correct way the bat hits the ball pardy behind it and, as it were, helps it on in its natural course, whereas at the incorrect moment the ball has to be thumped in order to send it in an exactly opposite direction from that in which it is going before meeting the bat.

In our judgment coaches ought to teach all beginners this stroke wherever they find weakness of wrist. The body is put in such a way as to compensate for a weak wrist, and if anyone takes up this position with a bat in his hand he will find that the stroke partakes of the qualities of a drive more than of a cut. Young players are generally rather impatient,