Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/129

102 whose balls are extremely slow, and are generally delivered at a considerable height in the air. You will not, as a general rule, find that even these men are good length bowlers, but even if they were, I do not think they ought to have a chance of hitting the batsman anywhere on his legs. The proper way to play such bowlers is to go out and hit the ball full pitch, or stay back and play or hit it as a more or less long hop. Even if the batsman should misjudge the length, and find that what he deemed a long hop is really a fair length ball, its extreme slowness makes it comparatively easy to play back. If he does not succeed in this I maintain that inasmuch as he has first misjudged the length, and in the second place has failed to hit it, the bowler is entitled to his reward, and the batsman should rightly be given out l.b.w., though the ball might have pitched a yard wide or the wicket. Older cricketers like myself used to play when lob bowling was far more common than it is now, but I cannot call to mind that it was a frequent occurrence for the old-fashioned lob to hit the batsman on the legs, and if not lobs why slow leg-break balls?