Wicket gate

“ The bow wicket has the advantage of providing a gate “always open and always shut,” and not apt to get out of repair. A wrought iron bow wicket, with short vertical bars, is shown in figure 262. Figure 263 has the bars horizontal,Page 165 and folds in the middle for a wheel-barrow or small animals to pass. To go through it, a person simply steps into the bow, swings the gate away from him, and swings it back in passing out. There is no latch to fasten, and no fear of the entry of livestock. Similar wickets may be constructed of wood for board fences.
WOODEN WICKETS. ”

“ Opposite the wicket, across the road, an ordinary bar-gate gives upon a corresponding track, driven through the thick of a dense coppice, which, at a depth of some two hundred feet, ends in the open fields. It is useful to bear in mind these local features, in view of the event which came presently to give them a tragic notoriety.
At Winton a wagonette met the two gentlemen, and they were landed at Wildshott soon after four o’clock. Bickerdike was interested to discover that they were the only guests. ”

“ Throughout the Vicarage, near and far, There is no lack of bolt or of bar; There are plenty of locks To closet and box, Yet the pantry wicket is standing ajar! And the little low door, through which you must go, Down some half-dozen steps, to the cellar below, Is also unfastened, though no one may know By so much as a guess, how it comes to be so; For wicket and door, The evening before, Were both of them lock'd, and the key safely placed On the bunch that hangs down from the Housekeeper's waist. ”

“ But the evolution of the wicket has been very gradual, and the history of it is very obscure, since different types of wickets seem to have existed simultaneously. If early pictures are to be trusted, no wicket was required in primitive times: the striker was either caught out, or run out, the fieldsman having to put the ball into a hole scooped in the ground, before the batsman could put his bat into it. A single stump, it is supposed, was sometimes substituted for the hole to save collision between the bat and the fieldsman’s fingers. ”

“ On wet hard wickets, when he can get no twist on, there is still life and pace in the ground; but in the sodden dead state, directly the ball touches the ground it sinks in, loses all life and pace, and comes on to the batsman like what a Yorkshire professional was once heard to call a 'diseased lawn-tennis ball.' There is no greater fallacy at cricket than to suppose that a sodden wicket is an advantage to a slow bowler. ”

“ There is far more elasticity in the whole arrangement; if an off-hitter like Palairet is batting, third man is put back against the ropes to save the fours. One often sees two different men fielding cover-point, one to each bowler; but most marvellous of all is the sight of the modern wicket-keep standing up to fast bowling with no long-stop, a very striking instance of the excellence of the wickets and the accuracy of the bowling. ”

“ Chases are forgotten, each player rushes all over the court trying to find a winning opening, and the game as an exposition of scientific graceful play came to an end when Pettitt took this country by storm with the underhand railroad service.
At cricket, as has been said, the reason for the modern style of play is principally to be found in the perfection of modern wickets. Bowlers have to resort to ungainly dodges, the field are all crammed in the slips and on the off-side, and the batsman in order to get the ball away hits across the wicket. ”

“ C. B. Dicky!
'Tis there you'll have the pull that wickets sticky
Or cut up, through the influence of weather,
Can't neutralise. They're never all together.
Some run like hares, some throw in like a Krupp;
But what they fail in is in "backing up."
L. B. Thanks be! I see my chance then. If they're loose
In fielding I can slog 'em to the doose.
C. B. But don't take liberties, my lad. No jumps
In for a drive; they're always on the stumps.
And then their wicket-keeper's like a cat. ”

“ I have already said, in the chapter on bowling, that on the modern true wickets plain accuracy is not sufficient to get batsmen out. I have never seen, with perhaps the exception of Peate, a better length bowler than Jack Hearne, and when the wicket is not of the easiest he has a good break and becomes very deadly; but you see batsmen, some of them not by any means first-rate, merely playing straight forward, and Hearne becomes easy. To get your opponents out on a hard wicket, you must sacrifice some accuracy to obtain turn and twist, and change of pace. ”

“ But the change of tactics in not having a long-stop has had one effect that we regard as pernicious, and that is, that it has spoilt one part of the skill of wicket-keeping, and on the whole worked an enormous change for the worse in the fielding of short-slips generally. The longstop is not there, both wicket-keeper and short-slip are conscious of this, and they are aware that his place must be filled up by themselves. If a ball goes in the least to leg, even if it only just misses leg-stump, short-slip is usually to be seen backing up the wicket-keeper ”

“ Grace would have often played it, and so would Steel, Shrewsbury, and one or two others—planets among the stars, to watch whom getting thirty runs out of a total of eighty on a difficult wicket is far more enjoyable to a skilled spectator than to see the hundreds got on ABC wickets. The chances that on a hard smooth wicket the very short ball will do anything abnormal is, nowadays, reduced to a minimum. ”

“ In like manner in back play the youngster puts his right leg up to his bat, and this is an innovation about which it may be said that cricket would be improved if it was no longer the fashion. In fact, the modern idea is that, failing the bat, the legs must protect the wicket; and we say most emphatically that this is against the spirit of the rules and practice of cricket. One hears a batsman who has been given out l.b.w. come away from the wicket and talk as if he were the victim of the greatest hardship. And why? Because he maintains that the ball pitched perhaps an inch off the off stump. ”

“ It is hard enough to make runs on a sticky wicket in England, but it is easy in comparison with a West Indian wicket after rain, for under the influence of a powerful tropical sun, the ball not only takes any amount of break, but gets up perfectly straight as well. The Trinidad ground is the largest, and has the best pavilion and seating accommodation, while of the many grounds I have seen in various parts of the world, none surpasses it from a picturesque point of view; but the wicket is a very bad one, and I really think the authorities would be wise to lay down matting. ”

“ But we have many aggressive batters, who settle down into first-rate bats when in the presence of a standard wicket keeper. We say most of them, advisedly, for a star will shine, wicket keeper, or no wicket keeper. The true aggressive batsman is a combination of cause and effect which no amount of ambition can even hope to imitate. Brain, guiding muscle, with discipline resulting from long and patient training. He can take almost any liberty with the bowler, he can play inside or outside his crease, for the dangerous ball never reaches the wicket keeper. ”

“ In other words, a safe field is generally a slow one, is lacking in electricity and rapidity of movement, and, as batsmen get to know this, the short run is attempted with impunity. Slow fields are earnestly advised to practise throwing; for their defects are less apparent when fielding a long distance from the wicket, and the non-observant spectator does not notice that the ground covered at a distance from the wicket by a slow field is very small compared to that commanded by some space-covering field like Palairet, Sugg, or J. Douglas. ”

“ The fields at short-slip and extra short-slip should, on the other hand, be sure catches. They have no opportunity for ground fielding, like cover-point, but they get more catches than any other field except wicket-keep; and at the present day on hard wickets it seems hardly possible to get a good side out unless you have a sure hand in the slips. If anybody who has been accustomed to keeping wicket wants a variety, let him take short-slip. He will get a great deal of the fun and none of the bruises of wicket-keeping. ”

“ Some few players rise superior to grounds, and though of course they can get many more runs on easy wickets, still they show good cricket when the wicket is in favour of the bowler.
The prevalence of easy wickets is not, in our opinion, an unmixed blessing. You may go and watch a match when the ground is as hard as iron and as true as truth, and see a magnificent innings played by some batsman. The same player on a bowler's wicket is not less uncomfortable than the proverbial fish out of water. A man may be a lion on a lawn, but a mere pigmy, when the ground is not a lawn. ”

“ And besides, the men that walk to the wickets to bat the first time they go into the field are apt to be more nervous than those who have been playing a few hours and have got accustomed to the light and general surroundings. These are disadvantages certainly, but they are as nothing compared to the advantages gained by batting first. These include getting the best of the light, the best of the wicket, and, last but not least, the incalculable advantage of having in the last innings of the match to save and not get runs on a wicket that has previously stood the wear and tear of three innings. ”

“ The body of the batsman in many cases completely obstructs the view the wicket-keeper ought to have of the ball. Even if he can get a good sight of the ball there is that abominable bat being fiddled about, baulking the eyesight in the most tantalising manner, and there are some batsmen who have a provoking habit of waving their bats directly the bowler begins his run, and continuing their antics till the ball is right up to them; while others seem to be built like windmills, and have a limb always at hand to throw out between the unhappy wicket-keeper and the rapidly-advancing ball. ”

“ The bowler starts to run, with arm extended. He makes a sort of curve round the wicket, and balances himself on one foot as he discharges his ball. It comes like lightning, right on to my bat, twisting it in my grasp, and then is snatched up in an instant by “point,” who tosses it to the wicket-keeper, who returns it to the bowler. All this is very alarming. Here are eleven men banded together with the one object of putting me out, and they are all so quiet and determined about it that I feel like a guilty thing as I stand there to defend my wicket. ”

“ A committee of noblemen and gentlemen (including Sir Horace Mann, the Duke of Dorset, and Lord Tankerville) drew them up at the 'Star and Garter' in Pall Mall. 'The pitching of the first wicket is to be determined by the toss of a piece of money.' Does this mean that the sides tossed for which was to pitch the wicket? As Nyren shows, much turned on the pitching of the wicket Lumpy (Stevens) 'would invariably choose the ground where his balls would shoot.' [21] In the rules of 1774, the distance between the stumps is the same as at present. The crease is cut, not painted. ”

“ But whatever the cause, slow bowling came to be the prevalent style, and the best way to get wickets was to pitch good length balls outside the off stump, and have most of the fieldsmen on the off side. This then marked another stage of development, because batsmen, to avoid the trap of being caught on the off side, began to cultivate the pull or cross-wicket hitting, unheard of a few years previously, but now becoming easier as wickets improved. ”

“ This also is a common fault, and the fact that often on good, true wickets it comes off is no justification of the practice; for it is a bad hit, and even a ball that would not actually hit the wicket, but just miss the leg-stump, should be driven past the bowler and mid-on, not hit to leg. The bowling of the present day is so accurate that in a first-class match we seldom see a long or deep square-leg, and batsmen often get impatient and go for a pull. ”

“ Having briefly pointed out these difficulties and dangers, let us beg the field to treat the wicket-keeper as tenderly as possible, to cultivate a straight throw, either a catch or a long-hop, and not half-volleys or, worse still, short-hops, and never to throw hard when there is no necessity. If the throw is crooked, the wicket-keeper should not leave his position to stop it; leave that to the men who are backing up. ”

“ He is not a random slogger, though such men have their real uses especially on difficult wickets: our real hero always plays the game, but he has an eye of a hawk and a brain of a general, a brain which can adapt itself to things as they come, be they rough or smooth. If the wicket pops and hangs, he has got the power of self-restraint; the bat will be in the right place, but held limply and with the left shoulder well up and forward, and his eye will never be off the ball from the second it leaves the bowler's hand ”

“ Ah, look out now at cover-point," adds he, as he sees a long-armed, bare-headed, slashing-looking player coming to the wicket. "And, Jack, mind your hits; he steals more runs than any man in England."
And they all find that they have got their work to do now: the new-comer's off-hitting is tremendous, and his running like a flash of lightning. He is never in his ground, except when his wicket is down. ”

“ Hence a run is worth more on such a wicket than on a hard one. But the ball is very easy for a good batsman to control and keep from the wicket under these conditions. There is no doubt that they favour batsmen, though sometimes sides collapse when a wet wicket suddenly occurs after a series of dry ones. It is not the wicket that causes this, but the change.
A wicket that dries slowly and equally may be described as neutral. It does not favour either batting or bowling. ”

“ The hard and crumbled wicket is perhaps almost more difficult for batsmen than when it is caked. The ball will twist a great deal on this class of wicket, and does it very quickly. It is also inclined both to 'pop' and keep low. Spofforth, Giffen, Peate, Barlow, and Barnes are all most deadly bowlers on such a wicket as this. ”