John and James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Companion 1882

22 if tlie stroke is made too soon not much harm is done ; if it is made too late, wicket-keeper or short.slip inevitably get. a catch. But “ Faint heart never won fair lady,” sa 3 rs the old saw, or words to that effect; and as no lady is so fair as this cut, no batsman should hesitate to run a little risk for such a prize. If his innings on a tine day is broken by a slight shower of rain, he should not need telling that, on resuming play, the ball will come faster from the pitch than before. This brings these imperfect notes on a great science to an end. Did space allow, much might be said on other aspects of batting, and an analysis made of other strokes, such as the leg-hit, straight drive, and play off the legs. Again, it would be most interesting to enquire how far batsmen are justified in talking of growing f<stale,” and, generally, what causes principally conduce to a man’s being “ out of form.’’ Much is said about these things by cricketers, and much interest taken in them by the numerous veterans who look on at the game with impartial eye, and rapturously speak of C larke , and P ilch , and M ynn , till those phantom-like celebrities of a past age live again in the praises of their pupils—for the most part, anything hut phantoms—at the present day. All these, and all modern players, find endless material for dis. cussion, or even dispute, in the technical questions presented by batting: and had this dissertation been swollen to twice its length no apology would have been needed on that score. The difficulty, as has been said, under which all treatises on games must labour, is that incompetent gamesters expect, most unreasonably, to be made into good players by absorbing the advice contained therein. No one ever became a lawyer bv sniffing his mind with briefs, or a good boxer by doing the same to his body with beef-steak slightly raw. The lawyer, the boxer, and the bats­ man will he found to be almost entirely indebted to bounteous nature for their eminence in these vocations : the most sensible of them will make use of these external aids, without expecting much from them. What he can get from them will depend on the amount of energy he devotes to quietly working up all that seems soundest in the precepts they contain.