OES the reader remember, in an

drawing of a woeful Nimrod in spring looking with an expression of intense regret at his boots and breeches, and heaving a deep sigh at the thought that he would not have an opportunity of using them for six months? Something similar is the case of the cricketer now. The season is over, and the player, who has laid aside his bat, may now look back on the past season and criticise.

In the first place, the game is not a whit less popular than before. Its extension has been steadily progressive. The wandering Zingari in England, Na Shuler in Ireland, and Free Foresters in Scotland, have continued their friendly contests, and spread the love of cricket in districts where a bat was not long ago unknown: and numbers know of Mr. Grace's average who never heard of George Parr. popularity in the great towns is testified by the throngs at the Oval and Lord's, and by the thousands who delight in seeing Freeman bowl or Daft bat; and not only is this progress shown in great matches, but it is also to be traced in the multitude of clubs which have sprung up, and in the inability of even bi-weekly 'Bell' to chronicle their scores.

Its

This being the case, we may look upon cricket more than ever as a national game, and consider its bearings with reference to the people who play it.

And the first question is, who are those that play it-at least, who make up the Elevens in the greater matches? And here let it be observed that we are going to speak chiefly of the matches played by men who have attained to considerable excellence in the game, under the impression that a game derives its main character from those who are best able to illustrate its good or bad points. The answer to our question will lead us to the point which we are anxious should be considered, not only by

Those that play cricket much— enough, at least, to attain the practice necessary for excellence-are either professionals who are paid for it, or men whose command of time is for the season unlimited. How many gentlemen are there who a few seasons ago were famous, and who now are rarely or never seen in flannels?

Where does one hear of Lyttelton and De Grey, Daniel, and Benthall? Where are E. Grace, Evans, Voules?

These are names which not long ago appeared in every match list at Lord's, just as those of Burbidge, Lane, and Dowson did in most of the matches at the Oval; and now, if you ask them to play, the answer will probably be, ‘I have not time.' Business men can, in season, hunt, shoot, or fish; but cricket is not for them. For who is there who can spare, and cares to spare, three days from his grinding of the great money-making machine to play a big match? The game is not worth the candle; the price paid for exercise is too high.

Pushing this feeling to its conclusion, we ask, Why does cricket take too much time? and the inevitable answer is, The innings are too long.

The season has been dry: no rain has come to stop the play; yet how many matches-not perhaps at Lord's, but at the Universities, the Oval, the northern grounds, and elsewhere, where the wickets are very true have been left unfinished? Few of the minor matches are completed in one day; several of the greater unfinished in three!

Let us start from another point of view. There has been a great falling-off undoubtedly in Surrey and Sussex. Yorkshire and Notts are favoured with unusually good bowlers, and are, for this year at least, exempt from what may be, ere long, equally their fate; but the southern counties fail from the fact that their batsmen are stale or weary, owing to the enormous innings against or in which they play.

Who can bat well time after time, match after match, with the certainty before them that unless their side gets a tremendous score they will probably be beaten?

There is no doubt of it. The batting has beaten the bowling.

Occasionally there occurs, as there always would under any circumstances, a reversal of the general rule, and we have what is called a bowlers' match where the wickets fall rapidly and the 'laudatores temporis acti' flatter themselves that the play is, after all, not much better than it was in their day. But fifteen years ago 100 was a winning score for a side to make; now 200 (in matches lasting over one day) is à losing one. A bowler lasts for a time and is successful, partly because he is unknown; then he is found out and comparatively useless. Three years ago Grundy and Wootton at Lord's' was a phrase calculated to inspire terror into any batsman. Now where is Grundy? and how many wickets did Wootton get when he played against Marylebone? And yet he is not too old: his actual deliveries are as good as ever; but he is known and played. Freeman and Emmett, McIntyre and Shaw, are in the zenith of their fame, yet who that saw Mr. Green play one couple, and Messrs. Dale and Walker the other, will not say that the bowler is woefully on the losing side, or, in the language of modern youth, has six to four the worst of it?

The batting has beaten the bowling in some instances the defeat is most extraordinary. In the match between Gentlemen and Players of the South, the Players, last year, made over 400, the Gentlemen over 500; and the first wicket of the latter fell for the enormous score of 283. In Gentlemen and Players at the Oval, this year, Mr. Grace made, in one innings, 215; and in the same innings Mr. Money made 109; in a match this year, against odds, Carpenter and Hayward scored over 300 between them; 500 has been repeatedly reached by a good eleven, and Mr. Hoare in Kent made over 300 off his own bat.

We know what you will say, you revered patron of the game, for

whose hat and opinions we have equal respect—we know what your objections will be; we have heard them many a time. They don't do it at Lord's,' you will say; they can't do it there. Look at four wickets for one run in the Oxford and Cambridge match, and a Harrow eleven out for a moderate score.' 'They don't do it at Lord's.' We bow before your experience, but we differ from your conclusion. Four wickets certainly fell for one run in the University match, but they were of men not famed for their batting; and even if they had been, the race is not always to the swift; the strongest armies are liable to panic and it is, moreover, impossible always to get up, under present conditions, the excitement which, in University and Public School matches, paralyzes the powers of many a good player, and gives the bowler an advantage.

And they do do it at Lord's. What was Daft's play like? Who that saw Yardley and Dale in one match, or Dale and Walker, Daft and McIntyre in another, will not say that the batting has beaten the bowling at Lord's as elsewhere?

But even suppose they did not do it at Lord's, why in the most scientific game in the world are you to demand for perfection of its development that one of the conditions should be faulty? Who would ask for a racquet court with an untrue backhand corner to help the server? who approve of a billiard-table with one pocket which 'drew'? Why is cricket not to be played with everything as good as it can be? Why are the bat, balls, stumps to be as perfect as possible, the ground alone incorrect? No; let us have the wickets as true as we can get them, and balance as best we may the difference that exists between batter and bowler.

But it is not only individual batting which has improved. There are twenty good bats now for every one of 1855. In old days the tail of an eleven was nearly always weak, now the last men are often as stubborn as the first, and a side is never all out till the tenth wicket has

actually fallen. Not long ago a

zealous reader of Bell's Life' used to make annually a list of the highest innings of the year, which he considered to be those above 80. This year how many times has 100 been made in one hands? We should be sorry to say.

Is this state of things as it should be? is the great superiority of one part of the game an advantage? In a perfectly calculated game we hold that one advantage is balanced by a corresponding disadvantage. Thus in tennis the superiority of the service side is counteracted by the benefit which the hazard-side player has in the dedans, which in its turn is modified by the risk which he runs if he plays for it and fails. Again, in whist the benefit of the deal is to a certain extent diminished by the loss of the lead. And as it is in these games so should it be in cricket; no portion of it should be eminently superior to the other. Moreover we are of opinion that the present state of things is not agreeable. You connoisseurs of cricket and paying supporters of the game, we appeal to you, how many times have we heard you say, 'So-and-so is batting splendidly, but still we wish he would get out, we want to see some one else in?' Would you not rather see a match in which every innings was under 150, and a man who made '50 had done wonders for his side, and when every match would necessarily be close, than the sensation matches of the present day, where the batsman often gets out from sheer fatigue, and where the side who gets first innings has such a great chance of making a runaway match? Why do you like seeing Mr. Thornton play, or Mr. E. M. Grace? Is it not that a few brilliant 'slogs' and a short and glorious career may relieve the monotony of correct play? You bowlers, too (and we especially appeal to that bowler who on first coming on to the Oval said, 'Ah! here is a good wicket; here I can make the ball do what I like'), would you not rather have to trust to your own skill than your opponent's mistakes, or the chapter of accidents which makes a ball easy ninety-nine times and get a wicket

the hundredth ? Nay, more, we appeal to the batsmen themselves. Do you like getting 150 runs? Would you not prefer conditions under which 25 was creditable, 50 a very large score, to the present state of the game? We have ourselves got large scores, and, to our mind, after the three figures were reached (and even this is mere pride) the rest was all vanity and weariness; and we consider that no part of the game is so enjoyable as getting 25 runs in what we called a bowlers' match.

If, then, the batting has beaten the bowling, and the conditions between the opposite sides are unfair, the practical question arises, How are we to remedy this fault, how give a bowler a fairer chance than he has now?

Several methods have been suggested for doing this, which we propose to examine in order, giving merely the most obvious arguments for and against them.

The first is to increase the size and weight of the ball, which at present measures from 9 to 94 inches in circumference, and weighs 5 to 5 ounces. And this proposal may be dismissed with brief consideration: the ball is already of sufficient size and weight to do serious damage occasionally, and though a fate like that of poor Summers is happily rare very rare-in a cricket field, yet we would not advise helping the bowler to get his wickets at the risk of personal danger to the batsInan. A heavier ball would be unwieldy, and either not subject to a hard hit, or, if so, then irksome to the fielder's hands. The ball at present is heavy and hard enough to be bowled, and yet not too much so to be hit; any increase in its dimensions would be injurious both to the game and the players.

The second proposal is to diminish the distance between the wickets. Look, it is said, at professional practice bowlers, how much better they bowl at 19 or 20 yards than at 22; look how much longer they can go on at this distance, how much more 'devil' there is in their bowling. Bowlers get tired in a match because the distance is so long and

their balls soon get shorter and shorter pitched, till the long series of long hops comes, which enables a good player so thoroughly to get his 'eye in' as to be able to defy any subsequent change.

This plan is decidedly worth consideration, and is advocated by many good judges. But the tendency of it would be to make, we think, in the first instance the batsman play even more forward than he does now, and eventually not to have very much effect. In practice, when bowlers are bowling at 20 yards, many more balls are driven than cut, not necessarily because the bowling is actually pitched up, but because it seems so. On good grounds the result of the change would not be to alter much the relative forces of batter and bowler; it might perhaps lead to some more catches being sent to the long fields, but the batsman would soon accustom his eye to the alteration in the foreshortening of the ball as it comes to him, and modify his play accordingly; and the sole ultimate result would probably be the negative one of relieving the bowler from part of his exertion without materially improving his position in the game.

The third proposal is one which is upheld by a respected frequenter of Lord's ground who has this year shown that his right hand has not even yet forgotten its cunning. He recommends that the distance between the creases should be diminished, that instead of being 4 feet it should be 3 feet 9 inches, or 3 feet 8 inches. He holds that the advantage given to the batsman by forward play would be much counteracted; that his ability to smother a good ball just after it has pitched would be modified; that he would have to play at the ball itself much oftener than at the pitch; that he would lose considerably his commanding power of driving, which terrifies the bowler into delivering over after over of long hops; that he would have to trust much oftener than at present to the mode of playing a ball so well known at tennis, not quite half-volley, not the instant after the ball has

bounded, but the instant after that (and this is no blind play, but the result of a quick eye and clear judgment, enabling the striker to hit the ball directly that he sees where it is, and can judge for certain the amount of bias which it has got); and that the change, while it helped the bowler, would do much to improve that beautiful part of the game, keeping wicket, by giving an adept more chances of obtaining a success.

The objections to the change which are at once started are, that it would cramp play and take away much of its present beauty, and that it would make the batter run too great a risk of hitting his wicket. The first objection seems just; but the point is, do we wish to cramp the batsman's power or increase those of the bowler? if the former, a considerable means is at our disposal; if the latter, if we desire, without diminishing the absolute advantages which a batter has, to diminish them relatively by increasing the forces of the bowler, let us not seek a means which will, it is averred, spoil much of the elegance of the batsman's art. The second objection is, we think, paltry: in the first place it is open to question; many men (notably a Sussex player named Wells) have stood close to their stumps without hitting their wicket habitually; and, in the second place, if it were true it would tend to the object which we have in view by increasing the batsman's risks.

Another way which is proposed, is to decrease the size of the bat. Consider, it is urged, the enormous weapon which you give the man who defends his stumps. Put a man at the wicket, bid him keep his bat grounded in front of the middle stump, and set to work to try and bowl him out. You can hardly do it except with a twist, and then the ball will as likely as not hit his leg: add to this the advantage given by a keen eye and quick hand, and then see how unfair is the contest. In the early days of cricket this was not the case; matches were played on rough grounds, the ball bounded where it listed and made utterly