Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/60

of the mowing machine and the heavy roller. There was one ball common enough in the sixties at Lord's and not uncommon on other grounds, and this was the shooter. The shooter is absolutely as extinct as the Dodo, and one reason why mediocre bats can now score so freely and could not forty years ago is because mediocre bats could never stop shooters. How shooters were produced is a matter on which great difference of opinion exists, and which I cannot quite explain. Some people think that the balls were not quite so round and well made as they are now; I myself think it probable that wickets eaten off by sheep and mown with the old-fashioned scythe was the explanation. The mowing machine shaves the grass like a razor; there are no little tussocks of grass, as was the case formerly, hardly visible but nevertheless existing; there was something for the ball to bite; but whatever the cause, every now and then both fast and slow balls, on touching the ground, instead of rising, became as it were glued to the surface and hit the bottom of the wicket, and I have seen a ball remain there, an inch or so in front of the stump, humming like a top and twisting round