The Ladies' Guide to Cricket

20 l right. Oil to tllO llll.li without, touch 111 £7 1,1m Rrnliml.” L ovku : “ .In speaking of the pit of a hall, the spot, where it first, touches the ground niter leaving the howler’s hand is 50—(> 0 on the telegraph, that looks better, good again for Stanley! a pretty snick between long-slip (No. 5), and long- stop (No. 3—see diagram). A snick , I hasten to explain, is a hit behind the wicket, on the off-side, made with the edge of the bat. It is an effective stroke, but rather dangerous, as, unless well placed ,a catch is a not unlikely result. Four f that and the ball again with Stanley. Well put to leg! that hit is what is called the Cambridge poke made thus. A ball pitched towards the striker’s legs is met with a sort of push from right to left, the body revolving as upon a pivot. That adds two to Stanley’ s score. Wide ball! A h ! Jack Leather is getting wild over Stanley’s punishing him so freely. And see ! long-stop has missed the ball, two runs being the result.” M bs . C hester : “ We know that those are bges, but what is a i wide-ballV ’ L over : “ A wide is a crooked ball which passes clear out of the batsman’s reach. It scores one to the in-side, but is marked in a separate column reserved for toides. In this case however, it will be marked two wides, since if two byes are run from a v\ide ball, they are always counted as wides, and not byes. This justly punishes the bowier, and is only fair to the long-stop. * M rs C hester : “ How so, pray ?” L over : “ An analysis is kept of the bowling to show the number of wickets each bowler takes, and the number of runs those wickets cost. The wides, of course, are black marks against him, and lie tries to avoid bowling them. Similarly the long-stop is very jealous of the number of byes which ho allows to pass him. Now, it is often impossible for him to stop the wide balls. Therefore the runs resulting from them are very properly called wides, and registered against the bowler, who is the guilty cause, instead of being placed in the column headed byes as a slur upon the character of the innocent long-stop, jiut observe the change in the bowling, Crumper, the Paragon Captain, is going to bowl in place of Leather, who has taken <'rumperh place at cover-point (7). The reason ot the change ie that runs were being made too quickly Irom Leathers ho* ling, uud Crumper wisely thinks that a new howler may chock ibis rapid scoring and perhaps, bring about the downhill of a wicket.”