Page:The Crisis in Cricket and the Leg Before Rule (1928).djvu/60

52 there is no reason why the slower leg-break bowlers should not be dealt with in the same way. There is also the possibility that if the l.b.w. rule were changed, batsmen would be compelled to stand less in front, so that the orthodox good-length bowlers like Staples, Parker and others would come to their own again, and less would be seen of the freak googlies which are so expensive and cause drawn matches. But I am fully aware that, though I still hold to my opinion that the whole hog should be gone for, it is better that the M.C.C. go too slow than too fast. So by all means for a beginning let the change apply only to balls on the off side and not on the leg, and it could be extended to both sides if run-getting were still to be too heavy, as in my opinion it assuredly would be.

In the Daily Telegraph of the 6th of June, 1927, Colonel Philip Trevor wrote with great ability on the l.b.w. question. Nobody has put the case more strongly in regard to the poisonous doctrine of batsmen standing in front of the wicket than he has when he wrote: "I unhesitatingly say that the huge majority of these obstructors "(i.e. batsmen who deliberately stand in front of the wicket)" do it for one reason alone, and that not an admirable one either. In the event of their making a mistake they want their legs as a second line of defence and they confidently rely on what they regard as an established custom of cricket . . . namely, that the umpire will see them through." In this sentence of Colonel Trevor's is found a severe indictment of Mr. Knight's Badminton Library teaching that "There is no possible harm in the batsman making use of a last line of defence (i.e. the legs), in the event of the bat not proving sufficient," and also of