Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

129 Practical Hints on Cricket but if you take your bat upright, straight down the wicket, and play on to the ball, you have the whole length of the bat, always taking care to play the ball with your bat, not the bat with the ball. Lay your bat on to the top of the ball and don’t pull your bat from the ground up to it. That is not Cricket. The bat was made to play the ball. Never make up your mind for a certain ball before it is delivered. Your mind being prepared for one sort of ball and another coming, as is almost sure to be the case, there will most likely be an accident. How often you hear men say, I have not been used to this or that sort of bowling. It’s all nonsense, they ought to practice all kinds. If a fast underhand Bowler is put on for a change (what I call a trundling Bowler, who gives a ball that bounds three or four times before it comes to you), he often does execution, specially with the rising generation. Why? – they have only been practising at one style; then they say, the twist of the ball, hop-stride, and jumping before it comes, deceives the eye; they having been used to only one bound and perhaps to one straight ball in the over, and the other being nearly always straight, they are rather alarmed and losing their confidence, the ball goes rolling through the wicket. In reality such balls are the easiest in the world to play. They want no judgment as to playing backwards or forwards. They only want a good full faced bat put to ‘em upright with a bit of a drive forward. Play of that kind will beat any Bowler of that style. Though bowling shall be ever so bad, I don’t say you shall hit away every ball. No, for it may by chance get up at the proper place, and make itself a good one. But you will be fully prepared by playing in the method I have described. You will see, by what I have said, that it is well to have an hour at ‘all sorts’, now and then. Besides, it will teach you to be on your legs, and shew you that there are many balls you have been in the habit of merely playing at and laying down, which you might hit away with confidence. For instance, balls over tossed, you will be able to drive forward hard by using your feet, while if you stand screwed to the ground you can only lay them down, and by that means you make a Bowler seem to deliver many more good balls than he really does. There is in short only one true method of play. That is, not to make up your mind till the ball is delivered, then if it be a little too far, play forward; if a little too short, play back. If it be put on the right place be decided, and play either one way, or the other, no halfway. In running your runs, you should always be prepared to take the advantage; which you will be able to do by leaving your ground as soon as the ball is out of the Bowler’s Hand. That will give you the advantage not only by being well on your legs, but by having a less distance to run. But bear in mind not to leave your ground till the ball has quitted the Bowler’s hand, or he will be justified in trying to put you out. Nothing looks worse than a man standing like a fixture, perhaps leaning on his bat. Then having to make a start and calling that a hard run, which if he had been prepared he might have walked. Run your first run well in case of any mishap in the field, and be sure always to let your partner know what you are going to do, by shouting at the top of your voice, so that he can’t mistake your meaning. How bad it looks to see two men getting into the middle between