James Pycroft

“ First-rate straight play and free leg-hitting seldom last long together: when once exulting in the luxurious excitement of a leg volley, the muscles are always on the quiver to swipe round, and the bowler sees the bat raised more and more across wicket. So, also, it is with men who are yearning for a cut: forming for the cut, like forming for leg-hit—aye, and almost the idea of those hits coming across the mind—set the muscles off straight play, and give the bowler a chance. ”

“ So, study accurate bowling, and let speed come of itself.
So much for attaining the power of a bowler; next to apply it. Not only practise, but study bowling: to pelt away mechanically, with the same lengths and same pace, is excusable in a catapult, but not in a man.—Can your adversary guard leg-stump or off-stump? Can he judge a length? Can he allow for a curve? Can he play well over an off-ball to prevent a catch? Can you deceive him with time or pace? Is he a young gentleman, or an old gentleman? ”

“ Cricket forms no debasing habits: unlike the bull-fights of Spain, and the earlier sports of England, it is suited to the softer feelings of a refined age. No living creature suffers for our sport: no frogs or minnows impaled, or worms writhing upon fish-hooks,—no hare screaming before the hounds,—no wounded partridge cowering in its agony, haunts the imagination to qualify our pleasure.
Cricket lies within the reach of average powers. A good head will compensate for hand and heels. It is no monopoly for a gifted few, nor are we soon superannuated. ”

“ For, without the habit aforesaid, a man will often shut his eyes, and remove his right fingers, as if the bat were hot, and then look behind him and find his wicket down. A second, will advance a foot forward, feel and look all abroad, and then try to seem unconcerned, if no mischief happens. A third, will play back with the shortest possible sight of the ball, and hear his stumps rattle before he has time to do anything. ”

“ Why, no man used to be more talked of than Yalden; and, when he came among us, we soon made up our minds what the rest of them must be. If you want to know, sir, the time the Hambledon Club was formed, I can tell you by this;—when we beat them in 1780, I heard Mr. Paulet say, "Here have I been thirty years raising our club, and are we to be beaten by a mere parish?' so, there must have been a cricket club, that played every week regularly, as long ago as 1750. We used to go as eagerly to a match as if it were two armies fighting; we stood at nothing if we were allowed the time. ”

“ The mountain mists and "mountain dew" suit better with deer-stalking than with cricket: our game disdains the Dutch courage of ardent spirits. The brain must glow with Nature's fire, and not depend upon a spirit lamp. Mens sana in corpore sano: feed the body, but do not cloud the mind. You, sir, with the hectic flush, the fire of your eyes burnt low in their sockets, with beak as sharp as a woodcock's from living upon suction, with pallid face and shaky hand,—our game disdains such ghostlike votaries. ”

“ How should you like to be doomed to play with some mischievous fellow, always tickling your elbow, and making you spasmodically play forward, when you ought to play back, or, hit round or cut, when you ought to play straight? Precisely such a mischievous sprite is a bad habit. Till you have got rid of him, he is always liable to come across you and tickle you out of your innings: all your resolution is no good. Habit is a much stronger principle than resolution. Accustom the hand to obey sound judgment, otherwise it will follow its old habit instead of your new principles. ”

“ A pugilist cannot throw in his body with a round hit; and a cricketer cannot make anything else but round hits. Take it as a rule in hitting, that what is not elegant is not right; for the human frame is rarely inelegant in its movements when all the muscles act in their natural direction. Many men play with their shoulders up to their ears, and their sinews all in knots, and because they are conscious of desperate exertion, they forget that their force is going anywhere rather than into the ball. It is often remarked that hard hitting does not depend on strength. ”

“ The pest of the cricket-field is the man who bores you about his average—his wickets—his catches; and looks blue even at the success of his own party. If unsuccessful in batting or fielding, he gives up all—"the wretch concentred all in self." No! Give me the man who forgets himself in the game, and, missing a ball, does not stop to exculpate himself by dumb show, but rattles away after it—who does not blame his partner when he is run out—who plays like play and not like a painful operation. ”

“ What wonder ere the days of useful knowledge, and Sir William Curtis's three R's,—or, reading, writing, and arithmetic,—that natural science should be evolved in a truly natural way; what wonder that notches on a stick, like the notches in the milk-woman's tally in Hogarth's picture, should supply the place of those complicated papers of vertical columns, which subject the bowling, the batting, and the fielding to a process severely and scrupulously just, of analytical observation, or differential calculus! ”

“ To form correctly as the ball pitches, there is time enough, but none to spare: time only to act, no time to think. So also with shooting, driving, and various kinds of exercises, at the critical moment all depends not on thought, but habit: by constant practice, the time requisite for deliberation becomes less and less, till at length we are unconscious of any deliberation at all,—acting, as it were, by intuition or instinct, for the occasion prompts the action: then, in common language, we "do it naturally," or, have formed that habit which is "a second nature." ”

“ All this is trying; but since it is always happening, an "inseparable accident" of the game, it is time that an unruffled temper should be held the "differentia" of the true cricketer and bad temper voted bad play. Eleven good-tempered men, other points equal, would beat eleven sulky or eleven irritable gentlemen out of the field. The hurling of bats and angry ebullitions show inexperience in the game and its chances; as if any man in England could always catch, or stop, or score. This very uncertainty gives the game its interest. If Pilch or Parr were sure of runs, who would care to play? ”

“ To play tosses, and ground balls, and hops, and every variety of loose bowling, by the rigid rules of straight and upright play, is a principle, the neglect of which has often given the old hands a laugh at the young ones. Often have I been amused to see the wonder and disappointment occasioned, when some noted member of a University Eleven, or the Marylebone Club, from whom all expected of course the most tremendous hitting "off mere underhand bowling," has been easily disposed of, by a toss or a ground ball, yclept a "sneak." ”

“ The reason of running out and losing runs is, generally, the want of an established rule as to who decides the run. How rarely do we see a man run out but from hesitation! How often does a man lose his chance of safety by stopping to judge what is his partner's ball! Let cricketers observe some rule for judging the run. There will then be no doubt who is to blame,—though, to censure the batsman because his partner is run out, when that partner is not backing up, is too bad. Let the man who has to decide bear all the responsibility if his partner is out ”

“ Aye, perseverance in well-doing—perseverance in a straightforward, upright, and consistent course of action.—See that player practising apart from the rest. What an unpretending style of play—a hundred pounds appear to depend on every ball—not a hit for these five minutes—see, he has a shilling on his stumps, and Hillyer is doing his best to knock it off. A question asked after every ball, the bowler being constantly invited to remind him of the least inaccuracy in hitting or danger in defence. The other players are hitting all over the field, making every one (but a good judge) marvel. ”

“ How generous and social is our enjoyment! Every happy moment,—the ball springing from the bat, the sharp catch sounding in the palm, long reach or sudden spring and quick return, the exulting throw, or bails and wicket flying,—these all are joys enhanced by sympathy, purely reflected from each other's eyes. In the cricket-field, as by the cover's side, the sport is in the free and open air and light of heaven. ”

“ Bad players dance about, as if they stood on hot iron, a dozen times while the ball is coming, with precisely the disadvantage that attends an unsteady telescope. "Then you would actually teach a man how to see?" We would teach him how to give his eyes a fair chance. Of sight, as of quickness, most players have enough, if they would only make good use of it.
To see a man wink his eyes and turn his head away is not uncommon the first day of partridge shooting, and quite as common at the wicket. ”

“ If once you move your pivot foot, you lose that self-command essential for leg-hits. So, practise, In your garden or your room, the stride and swing of the bat, till you have learnt to preserve your balance.
One of the best leg-hitters is Dakin: and his rule is: keep your right foot firm on your ground; advance the left straight to the pitch, and as far as you can reach, and hit as straight at the pitch as you can, just as if you were hitting to longfield: as the lines of bat and ball form an angle, the ball will fly away square of itself. ”

“ The judgment now proposed for the umpire, is no difficulty at all, but the judgment he has already to exercise is a great difficulty indeed. How often is a batsman convinced, that the ball that hit him before wicket was making so abrupt a turn, that it must have missed the wicket, and, but for that abrupt turn, would never have hit him at all. I do not believe that of the men given out "leg before wicket," one in three are deservedly out. But, often do we see a wicket saved by the leg and pads, when both the skill of the bowler and the blunder of the batsman deserved falling stumps. ”

“ The most any one of these bowlers can do is to look out for the balls of his own set; whether hit or not by a ball from behind, is very much a matter of chance. A ball from the opposite row once touched my hair. The wonder is, that twelve balls should be flying in a small space nearly every day, yet I never heard of any man being hit in the face—a fact the more remarkable because there was usually free hitting with loose bowling. Pierce Egan records that, in 1830, in the Hyde Park Ground, Sheffield, nine double-wicket games were playing at once—two hundred players within six acres of grass! ”

“ Whether a ball undulates in the air, or whether there is an equal undulation in the line of the eye which regards that ball, the confusion and indistinctness is the same. As an experiment, look at any distant object, and move your head up and down, and you will understand the confusion of sight to which I allude. The only security of a good batsman, as of a good shot, consists in the hand and eye being habituated to act together. Now, the hand may obey the eye when at rest, but have no such habit when in unsteady motion. ”