a run, explaining to them the principles of running, and calling their partner (secrets which some really good batsmen never have learned and never will learn), and so on. The grand thing is to try and make cricket real. and to make youngsters understand that playing the strict game is the secret of true enjoyment. We all know how all pleasure depends on observance of simple rules, and on doing in practice all things as carefully as if we are engaged in a match, or any other friendly strife. Even if I play at 'beggar your neighbour' with a child I insist on the rigour of the game. Many of us must know as cricketers, too, that long after we had given up playing in matches, there was immense pleasure in having a first-rate professional, on a real good wicket, to bowl, with sixpence on the wicket.
The very mention of single wicket now is like the mention of jalap and rhubarb and calomel and bleeding, those terrible remedies of the past, to a modern doctor; but single wicket with seven or eight in the field is the finest practice for training, and we found it so on our village green, a very few years ago, played thus. Every man's hand was against his neighbours in turn, and there were no sides. Of course, with six or seven in the field, byes and hits behind wicket counted, and this fact made the youngsters try to cover as much ground as possible. The batsman went out if he got ten runs; and as in these games there was, at least, one good professional bowler, it took a good man to score ten runs. The professional and any amateur who had any pretence of being a bowler changed about. These games were very good for putting a youngster into; and I have seen three or four hundred people on the green watching one of these trials. It was also a good thing, in the event of a substitute being wanted in a good match, to try one of them, as it accustomed an aspirant to accept responsibility and to play before a crowd. It is a wholesome state of things when young cricketers are at hand anxious to fill a vacancy; it shows zeal.
Anyone who has charge of village cricket falls very short of his duty if he does not arrange at least one real practice afternoon a day or two before a match. He must have a
