Page:The Crisis in Cricket and the Leg Before Rule (1928).djvu/90

Rh capped by the abuse of the l.b.w. rule and artificially prepared wickets. Instead of this being recognised, there is a tendency merely to rail at the unfortunate bowler for not doing what is impossible. These critics should read and re-read what Strudwick has said in his book and seriously think over the figures given in my third chapter about the bowling of Spofforth, showing how a great bowler met with deserved success, largely because in those days it was not considered sportsmanlike to use legs to protect the wickct.

Something must be done. Nothing has been done that has had the slightest effect since 1864, when overhand bowling was made legal. In or about 1902 the bowling crease was widened and no result whatever was obtained in the way of helping the bowler. At the beginning of 1927 the size of the ball was slightly reduced, which it was hoped might help the bowler. If we may judge from the number of runs got in the first seven weeks of dry, fast, and easy batting wickets, the smaller ball had no more effect than Canute's order to the sea not to advance.

I am well aware that important changes in the laws of cricket should not be made hastily, but nobody can bring the M.C.C. to book on this account. When I first began writing this small book, I had entirely forgotten, or, what is more likely, never read the report of the first meeting of the County Cricket Council held in 1887. To my astonishment I found that all the uneasy feelings felt by so many of us in the last ten years, and which get stronger as the num­ber of drawn matches increases and the run-getting gets larger, existed in 1886, no fewer than forty-two years ago. A short epitome of the proceedings of that meeting of