Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/115

The maxim inculcated by Nyren, "Be sure keep a length," is no good now. The ball cannot be made to turn, shoot, or hang. The shaven grass and the heavy roller have taken all this out of the ground. Any fool can get runs now, so the bowler has given up trying to bowl well, and bowls badly instead. You go and see a match nowadays, and you see a very fast bowler like Jones, the Australian, or Jessop, pounding the ball half-way down the pitch—with four or five men in the slips—and endeavouring to make the ball bump, that the batsman may hit under it and get caught behind the wicket. There is another bowler who bowls slow, and who is determined to get a curl or twist on his ball. The bowler, whose ball has a natural curl from leg, is disestablished by the absurd regulation of leg before wicket as interpreted at present, and the bowler I am trying to describe is not one of that class. He is of the class that tries to get a twist of a foot or so, but though I have seen many such bowlers I never in my life saw one who could bowl a good length with a leg twist. The fast bowler pounding away with long hops, and the slow bowler