Page:The Cricket Field (1854).djvu/96

72 dimensions of 27 inches by 8 in 1817; when, as one inch was added to the stumps, two inches were added to the width between the creases. The changes in the wicket are represented in the foregoing woodcut. In the year 1700, the runner was made out, not by striking off the transverse stump—we can hardly call it a bail—but by popping the ball in the hole therein represented.

David Harris' bowling, Fennex used to say, introduced, or at least established and fixed, a steady and defensive style of batting. "I have seen," said Sparkes, "seventy or eighty runs in an innings, though not more than eight or nine made at Harris's end. "Harris," said an excellent judge, who well remembers him, "had nearly all the quickness of rise and the height of delivery, which characterises over-hand bowling, with far greater straightness and precision. The ball appeared to be forced out from under his arm with some unaccountable jerk, so that it was delivered breast high. His precision exceeded anything I have ever seen, in so much that Tom Walker declared that, on one occasion, where turf was thin, and the colour of the soil readily appeared, one spot was positively uncovered by the repeated pitching of David's balls in the same place." "This bowling," said Sparkes, "compelled you to make the best of your reach forward; for if a man let the ball pitch too near and crowd upon