wicket seemed to me even more difficult than at Cape Town, for the ball, besides taking a lot of break, turned very quickly. Perhaps, however, I am unduly influenced by the fact that I made "spectacles" at Port Elizabeth—a favourite ground, by the way, for Englishmen to fail on, for more than one well-known cricketer has "bagged a brace" there.
Cape Town and Port Elizabeth are the only two cricket grounds in South Africa which can boast of a grass out-field; all the other grounds are absolutely innocent of a blade of grass, being nothing, indeed, but a brown-reddish sand—somewhat like the colour of the sand on the sea-shore—rolled into a flat and hard surface. The matting is stretched on this sand, and makes a hard, true, and very fast wicket, while the ball, once past a fielder, simply flies to the boundary.
The "Wanderers' ground, Johannesburg, is by far the best ground in South Africa, for the wicket is exceptionally fast, and the out-field level and true. At Kimberley there is a good wicket, but the outfield is rather rough, which may be said with truth of nearly all South African grounds, except the Wanderers'. Natal we did not visit, but I am told that the Maritzburg Oval is in almost every respect the equal of the Wanderers' ground.
It will be seen from what I have said that matting wickets differ according as to whether they are laid on grass or otherwise. Matting stretched on grass gives the bowler more than a two-to-one chance, but matting on the bare grassless ground favours the
