Page:The Crisis in Cricket and the Leg Before Rule (1928).djvu/54

46 You can see a whole day's cricket with hardly one straight drive to the ropes along the ground.

The pull and hook to leg is with some batsmen almost an obsession. They begin to move into position for it nearly every ball. A well-known cricketing journalist told the writer that one of the enterprising snap-photographers of these days was lucky enough to snap a batsman standing at the wicket to a ball that never came, because the bowler got wrong in his step and stopped. The photograph showed the batsman standing with both legs right in front of the stumps and facing the bowler. From this position it is impossible for any batsman either to straight drive or cut a fast ball, when there is not sufficient time to move the feet to another position. If a straight ball well up is delivered he can only push it, as anyone can find for himself who takes a bat and puts himself in front of the wicket facing the bowler. If the ball is short and outside the off stump his position prevents him cutting, but he pulls the ball to leg, and the most beautiful hit in cricket, in the opinion of many, is sacrificed in favour of the coarse, brutally efficient pull. It is strange but true that, if it is important to keep down run-getting, the best ball to bowl to some modern batsmen is the straight half-volley which, owing to the posi­ tion they have taken, cannot be hit but isgently played back to the bowler or mid-wicket fieldsmen.

All this ugly and tiresome state of things is really largely due to incessant moving of the feet in front of the wicket. Not only does this make the batsmen impotent, as far as cutting and straight driving is concerned, but it leads to much waste of time by batsmen leaving many balls alone.