Lives in Cricket No 7 - Richard Daft

shot, the draw, of which Richard was one of the last practitioners, by which the batsman places the ball to leg by playing it between the leg stump – and his legs. Richard concludes his Hints : ‘Lastly, some cricketers are born and others are made; but anyone ought to make himself a fair player by perseverance.’ The conclusion to his penultimate chapter makes a better summation of his career: ‘And here I have gone through the whole of my career down to the present time and look back to the time I was a young man; I am far from regretting that I have been a cricketer; and he who has never indulged in this noblest of all pastimes, be he prince or peasant, has missed one of the greatest enjoyments of life.’ Kings of Cricket 125 Hudson and Kearns made this rather curious attempt in about 1895 to catch Richard Daft’s character.