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68 was, in the early days of the Hambledon Club, one foot high and two feet wide, consisting of two stumps only, with one stump laid across. Thus, straight balls passed between, and, what we now call, well pitched balls would of course rise over. Where, then, was the encouragement to block, when fortune would so often usurp the place of science? And, as to the bat, look at the picture of cricket as played in the old Artillery Ground; the bat is curved at the end like a hockey stick, or the handle of a spoon, and—as common implements usually are adapted to the work to be performed—you will readily believe that in olden time the freest hitter was the best batsman. The bowling was all along the ground, hand and eye being everything, and judgment nothing; because, the art originally was to bowl under the bat. The wicket was too low for rising balls; and the reason we hear sometimes of the Block-hole was, not that the block-hole originally denoted guard, but because between these two-feet-asunder stumps there was cut a hole big enough to contain the ball, and (as now with the school boy's game of rounders) the hitter was made out in running a notch by the ball being popped into this hole (whence popping crease) before the point of the bat could reach it.

Did we say Running a Notch? unde Notch? What wonder ere the days of useful knowledge,