Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/281

234 batsman; and, as if this were not enough, the greater knowledge of soils and seeds, heavy rollers and mowing machines, have combined with the alteration of the rules to make mammoth scores the rule and not the exception. The general result has been drawn matches, a bowing down before the hideous power of gate-money, and a degradation of what once was the grandest game in the world.

O'Connell once said that he could drive a coach and four through any Act of Parliament. Such a feat may not be possible in the case of the rules of cricket, but the rules of any game are so difficult to draft, and so much difference of opinion exists as to the proper way of interpreting them, that to a considerable extent umpires have to hold the scales. Umpires have ultimately to decide and to give a judgment on many points during a match, and, for the time being, against their ruling there is no appeal. To decide a leg-before-wicket question, a run out, a catch at the wicket, is difficult, but to decide the question as to what constitutes throwing as opposed to bowling, is harder still. So great is this difficulty that a body