players of the old style were bad players because they played in the contrary way, for great players rise above rules and play by the force of their greatness; but we are chiefly concerned with the ordinary mortal, and our advice is, throw the left leg right out and play to the level of the left foot. Some good players maintain that, as the shooter comes so seldom nowadays, it is wasting power to ground the bat when playing forward, it being sufficient if it is placed according to circumstances,
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Fig. 3.—Forward play.
varying with the state of the ground. It is certain that shooters are far less frequent than they were; still, unless a man's bat be grounded, a shooter will inevitably bowl him, so he raises his bat at his own risk. Fig. 3 illustrates grounding the bat in forward play, and fig. 14, at the end of this chapter, illustrates playing forward without grounding.
The ball which is too short for the player to play forward to with his bat at the proper slant must be played back and
