Page:Cricket (Steel, Lyttelton).djvu/97

Rh leg stump, to within two or three inches of it, is a ball to drive and not hit to leg. It should be hit towards mid-on or between the bowler and mid-on; and to apply what has been said before, hit it as hard as you can, as if you do miss it you will not be bowled. Keep the right leg still and lunge forward on to your left foot, which should be a little thrown forward, and hold the bat tight.

We have now sufficiently discussed the principles that ought to guide the young player in playing fast bowling on a good fast wicket, and if he observes what has been said he will find that he plays a good safe game, assuming that his eye is straight and that he is able to put his bat in the place where his eye shows him it ought to go. The play to fast bowling on slow tricky wickets brings out the batsman's real talent, and he will discover that what was easy on a hard wicket is full of difficulty on a soft. There are no decisive rules to guide the player on such wickets; he must trust to his eye and capacity for watching the ball. The player that can watch the ball carefully is the man who will succeed on slow difficult wickets; and anybody who has seen Grace, Shrewsbury, and A. G. Steel bat under these circumstances will understand what this watching the ball means. If the ground is very fast there is hardly any time for a careful watching of the ball; the player must play largely by instinct, which will tell him where the ball is going, and as the wickets nowadays are so very true the ball will nearly always take a natural course, that is, straight from the pitch. The left-handed bowler round the wicket will come with the bowler's arm slightly from off to leg, the right-handed bowler also round the wicket from leg to off, but these are both the natural courses the ball ought to take. On slow wickets, however, the ball will come slower; it will take all sorts of fantastical turns and twists, it will get up straight, and sometimes hang or stop a little. It will generally be found that very fast bowlers do not shine on slow soft wickets, for they have great difficulty in getting a good foothold. It is the medium and slow bowlers who revel on such ground, as Peate, Barlow, and