also, "slobbering" a ball, to see how many arts there are of recovering it afterwards. I need hardly say that jumping off your feet for a high catch, and rushing in to a ball and patting it up in the air and catching it the second attempt, are all arts of first-rate practitioners.
Safe Hands.—Your hands should be on the rat-trap principle,—taking anything in, and letting nothing out again. Of course a ball has a peculiar feeling and spin off a bat quite different from a throw; so practise accordingly. By habit hand and eye will go together: what the eye sees the right part of the hand will touch by a natural adjustment. There is a way of allowing for the spin of the ball in the air: as to its tendency at Cover, to twist especially to the left, this is too obvious to require notice.
I am ashamed to be obliged to remind players, old as well as young, that there is such a thing as being a good judge of a short run: and I might hold up, as an example, an Honourable gentleman, who, though a first-rate long-stop and fine style of batting, has a distinct reputation for the one run. It is a tale, perhaps, thrice told, but more than thrice forgotten, that the partner should follow up the ball; how many batsmen destroy the very life of the game by standing still like an extra umpire. Now, in a school Eleven, running notches can be practised with security, because
