Cricket. Robert Henry Lyttelton
playing forward, the tip of the five toes of the right foot only must touch the ground, the back of the heel pointing straight to the sky; but the whole of the right foot must never be shifted except when you move it across to cut. Be careful to distinguish between cutting and off-driving. They are quite distinct, and one important difference between them consists in the fact that in off-driving, the left foot is moved across; in cutting, the right. G. H. Longman is the only instance I can call to mind of a man who cut with the left foot across, and his cutting consisted of beautiful timing of the ball, and more of a drive than a cut. But Prince Ranjitsinhji, whose wrists resemble small serpents, steps back to fast bowling, and with that marvellous quickness of his, hits the shortest fast balls all round the wicket. This, however, is a gift that I have never observed in anybody else, and I incline to the old opinion, that the right foot should never be moved to fast bowling except to cut. If anybody tries Prince Ranjitsinhji's methods with less than his suppleness of wrist, he will find his wicket disturbed. Ranjitsinhji himself could never have done it in old days when the wickets sometimes shot and often bumped; it is a stroke, in fact, begotten and nurtured on Fenners and Brighton. Another difference between playing fast bowling and slow, is that fast bowling is far easier to hit behind the wicket on the off-side than slow, as may be seen from the fact that Richardson has, besides the wicket-keep, three fields in the slips at least; while to slow—Tyler, for instance—two would suffice. As every cricketer knows, players are constantly caught in two minds when playing slow bowling, the result being a compromise frequently attended by disaster. To fast bowling there is no time for two minds; your first instinct may be a wrong one, but for better for worse it is the first and only instinct.
A good batsman often leaves his ground to slow bowling, and, meeting the ball either full pitch or the second it leaves the ground, pulls it to leg if a full pitch, or drives it if a half volley. In the case of a full pitch a batsman often has the power to place it where there are no fields; if leg is put square, as he invariably is to slow bowling, he can pull the ball fine out of his reach. Great care, however, is necessary to go out to the right ball; for if a bowler has any break, and you do not smother the ball, the batsman will be beat by the break, and stumped or bowled. Some bowlers break so much that it is almost true to say you had better go on the safe side and not leave your ground, unless you can be sure of getting the ball full pitch.
To very slow bowlers it therefore follows that the really proper standard of play is to play back, or, going out of your ground, to hit full pitch; but remember one thing, never go out to a ball unless certain of making it a full pitch, that is on the off side, for it is not easy to hit it with a straight bat, since if you miss it you must be stumped. To medium pace bowling some sort of compromise must be adopted between the two methods I have recommended. You cannot go out of your ground to such bowlers; on the other hand, you ought not to play so many balls forward, and you must be very careful to observe the changes of pace. When the wicket is very hard and fast, the commonest way of getting out is to be caught behind the wicket either by the wicket-keep standing back, or in the slips; and the reason is, that to one sort of bowler it is very easy to hit under the balls you are trying to cut; and to another sort (when the ball comes across at all from leg) batsmen are very apt to play inside it, just turning it thereby into short slip's hands. It is well when you first go in, therefore, to sacrifice some strength at off balls, refraining from making a clean hit, and, instead, to hit on the top of the ball to keep it down.
To score on difficult bowlers' wickets is an art that stands by itself. The men who can do this are the chosen few. Where one man can show scientific cricket on soft, caking grounds, ten at least can be found who can play and hit bowling when the wicket is hard and fast. There are two sorts of players whose methods are entirely different and entirely opposite. The really scientific batsman who plays correct and orthodox cricket, watching every ball with the eye of a hawk, keeping his left shoulder well forward and thereby getting well over the bumping ball, holding the bat, when occasion demands, loosely—such a bat hardly exists. Of course, putting Grace aside, the only batsmen of the scientific sort whom I have seen rise above difficulties of wicket are Shrewsbury, Barnes, Steel, and Rashleigh; and of these the greatest is Shrewsbury, whose innings of 164, in 1886, against Palmer, Giffen, Garrett, Spofforth, and Evans, was the greatest individual innings on a bowler's wicket that I have ever seen; and ever to be held in honour was Rashleigh's two innings in 1888, when he scored 48 and 37 on a real bowler's wicket against Turner and Ferris just in their prime, and whom he had never seen before.
The other sort of player, who sometimes comes off on difficult wickets, is the bold and fearless hitter; and in this, as in several other ways, we have learnt a lesson from the Australians. In the particular match I have just mentioned, in which Rashleigh played those two celebrated innings, the opposite method was seen when M'Donnell, though against vastly inferior bowling, scored over 100 by the most fearless, dashing cricket. In the same year M'Donnell's greatest innings was played at Manchester, when, in the last innings, going in first with Bannerman, on a soft wicket against Peate and the crack northern bowlers, he scored 82 out of a total of 86. This innings of M'Donnell, and Shrewsbury's of 164, I consider the two greatest batting feats that this generation has seen on bad wickets, while O'Brien's 148 against Surrey in 1896 ranks high.
In giving a sort of brief summary of batting now, it appears to me that, as may be naturally inferred when so many splendid grounds are provided, batsmen score faster and far more largely than formerly; but not being so accustomed to bad wickets, they do not rise superior to difficulties of pitch so well as our former batsmen. On bad wickets, I think, in their prime, Carpenter, Mitchell, George Parr, Daft, and Hayward, having been obliged to play grand bowling before the heavy roller and mowing machines were invented, became more proficient than players do now, except the four players mentioned before. Batsmen get demoralised when the wicket plays tricky. They never get hurt now, but I remember Grace on Lords, about 1869, against Freeman and Emmett, getting a tremendous crack on the elbow, and how the crowd cheered when he drove the next ball for six. Big scoring is all very well, but it is not the whole of cricket. I may be wrong, but I think I see a decadence, not because of less skill, but because the old balance has been rudely disturbed. It is not possible to make bowlers good enough to get bats out on hard wickets for reasonable scores, so as to make it possible for matches to be finished always in three days, and tolerably often in two days, such as Fenners, Brighton, and many others.
Of course, Grace is by far the greatest batsman of all time; but no cricketer ought ever to forget that no county has, during the space of the last fifty years, produced such five mighty bats as Nottingham, in the persons of George Parr, Richard Daft, Arthur Shrewsbury, William Barnes, and William Gunn.
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