greater than the whole, and that when Philip Norman finished West Kent Cricket, there was nothing left unsaid?
Now of all the various sorts ot cricket that are played in and out of this country, I am prepared to maintain against all the writers in this or any other book that village cricket is at once the most amusing to watch, the most exciting to play, and of the greatest educational value to the English race. Notice, I do not call it the most scientific form of the game, though there is a special sort of science required to finish a match between 3 and 7 p.m. every Saturday afternoon! Let us first compare it, from a spectator's point of view, with county cricket; and it will help to emphasise my point if I quote one or two reports of county matches culled at random from the daily press in August this year:—
Notts v. Kent, at Nottingham. "Kent, holding a lead of 91 runs on their first innings, did not hurry themselves unduly in their second venture. Dillon took forty minutes to register a couple of singles"!
Leicester v. Sussex, at Brighton. "On Saturday, Dr. Macdonald was in three hours and threequarters for 48 runs, having in the previous innings made 33 in about two hours. In other words, he was batting five hours and forty-five minutes for 81 runs"! And the poor reporter adds drowsily, "It was a terribly monotonous performance."
Is not this a veritable caricature of cricket? Why, rather than watch such a game drag its dreary trail
