Page:The Crisis in Cricket and the Leg Before Rule (1928).djvu/23

Rh all Umpires the club may employ, that should they at any time see any batsman deliberately in their opinion defending his wicket with any part of his person, they shall report the same to the committee, and they hope that with the co-operation of the County authorities and cricketers generally this step will be found adequate to prevent the evil complained of. If not stronger measures may be necessary, but time will have been given for mature consideration, and the risk will be avoided of making an alteration in a most important law which experience may show cannot be maintained."

The Sub-Committee which passed the resolution and recommendation fully set out in the last paragraph consisted of Lord Bessborough, Lord Lyttelton (formerly Hon. C. G. Lyttelton), C. E. Boyle, A. W. Ridley, W. E. Denison, V. E. Walker, A. J. Webbe, Hon. Spencer Ponsonby and H. Perkins. When the resolution and recommendation came before the meeting, made special after the annual general meeting of 1888, a motion to defer the consideration of the alterations of the laws proposed by the Sub-Committee was carried in order to obtain the opinion of the leading clubs in England and elsewhere.

The next step in this controversy was a meeting made special after the annual general meeting in May, 1901. One resolution was moved and debated upon, and to under­ stand it better the present l.b.w. law must be read, which is as follows: "The striker is out... if with any part of his person he stops the ball which in the opinion of the Umpire at the bowler's wicket shall have been pitched in a straight line from it to the striker's wicket, and would