to be regretted by all lovers of the game. We have scores of slow bowlers turned out year after year from our universities and public schools, but scarcely ever a fast one worthy of the name of 'bowler.' Few men care to be at the trouble and exertion of bowling fast when they find that inferior batsmen, by dint of playing straight and assisted by a perfect wicket, can successfully defy all efforts to dislodge them. When a map has become fairly proficient with the bat there is no easier bowling to play, if the wicket be a really good one, than fast. Men will not be at the great trouble of practising fast bowling and trying to get accuracy of pitch and direction when they see the best fast bowlers in England occasionally treated by second-class batsmen with the utmost disrespect.
Although fast balls are easy to play on good wickets, however, it is but seldom that a wicket which is good at the beginning of a match remains so to the close. The ground wears and cuts up with the continual pitching of the ball and the tramp of feet, and fast bowling on such occasions often becomes most deadly. Then, again, a fast quick delivery to a new-comer, even though the best of batsmen, may deceive him in the pace, and, before the eye gets accustomed to the light and the hand becomes steady, cheat him into playing back at a ball which ought to have been met with forward play. Often have crack batsmen been dismissed summarily by the first or second ball coming quicker than they expected off the pitch. Murdoch, the famous Australian batsman, was particularly apt to mistime fast bowling on first going in, and several times has the author seen his stumps shattered immediately by an ordinary straight fast ball without any 'work' at all on it. The tail end of a team are usually victims to a good straight fast bowler, as, unless a fast bowler is met by straight fearless forward play, he is bound to be dangerous, and it very rarely happens that the tail end of an ordinary team, even a county team, is capable of this. A great deal has been said and written about young fast bowlers bowling too fast for their strength, thus overtaxing their powers and over-bowling themselves. It is doubtless a fact that many
