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modern fierce hitter, of whom Jessop is the present conspicuous example. It is not easy to explain the fact, but such hitters seem to prefer the rather fast good-length bowler like Hearne to bowlers who pitch the ball fairly well up but with some break, and can deliver the high-in-the-air dropping ball, but never far enough up for a quick-footed hitter to hit them full pitch.

In the University match of 1899 Jessop scored 42 runs in about twenty minutes, but the Oxford captain with excellent judgment kept on Knox at the Nursery End, who was just such a bowler as I have described. Jessop made fun of all the other bowlers, but though he hit Knox several times to the ropes, he was obliged to hit at the pitch of the ball which had some turn on it, and sooner or later it looked obvious that he would be caught; and he eventually was. To a batsman like Shrewsbury, who plays on really scientific principles, such a bowler as Knox would present no difficulty whatever, but it is a curious fact that such bowlers are more generally successful in getting out what our forefathers would have