at Lords on a wicket that for once behaved in a way that reminded old cricketers of Lords in the 'sixties, with this exception, that not one dead shooter was seen. I saw the match, and undoubtedly the fast bowlers, Larwood, Durston and Allen, did make the ball kick occasionally. Mr. Twining got a severe blow over the heart, but nobody else was knocked out, though they got hit. It was a wicket that very likely Hearne had never played on before and he had to abandon his style, as shown in the illustrations, and adopt one totally foreign to his nature. He stood still and kept clear of the wicket for the first time in his life that I have seen and was out at once. But this wicket had apparently got on Hearne's nerves, for he was moved, to write an article in an evening newspaper in which a sporting wicket, as he describes it, is indeed painted in lurid colours. Hearne expresses his belief that such wickets did not exist when W. G. Grace, Shrewsbury and others had to meet Richardson, Lockwood and Kortright who, he implies, would not have been called bowlers but murderers if they had bowled on them. Hearne goes on to say that top dressing of cricket pitches, as far as first-class cricket is concerned, has been used for more than thirty years, and that appeals to the M.C.C. to restrict the groundsman's act have rightly had no effect. Hearne seems to have thought the Notts and Middlesex wicket so dangerous that any good scoring was almost impossible and Lee's century for Middlesex was "the amazing part of the game."
With all respect to Hearne, his statements do not bear a close examination. It is nonsense to say that W. G. Grace and others did not play on such wickets. Hearne is,
