Sporting notions of present days and past

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150 SPORTING NOTIONS
can after a ball, so put him in trousers, which are
certainly five seconds in the hundred yards slower
than knickers and stockings. Please do not
assault me with fancy sketches of a field perform-
ing in 'Varsity running or rowing costume; but
just consider that by slight modification of the
conventional get-up, pace might—I will write
must—be accelerated to the extent of not less
than five, and probably more, yards in the
hundred, not to mention lightening the day's
work.
Dear me, how the time runs away! What
seems but yesterday took place, you find, ten or
twenty years ago. How long is it since I first
heard Mr Absolom deliver, during the Canterbury
Cricket Week, his lecture on the art of batting,
in which he pointed out, with all common-sense
on his side and the scientific " school " authorities
dead against him, that the great aim of a batsman
was, first, to do what he wanted himself, and,
second, to prevent the bowler from doing what
he (the trundler) did desire. And the means ?
That was where Absolom differed diametrically
from the " schools." According to them, there
was a right and legitimate stroke for every sort
of ball that came within hitting distance, and
it was your duty to go on as you would in
broad-sword exercise, with a guard for each cut,
so that you were fairly expected to do a certain
thing if your enemy the trundler offered to your
notice a particular class of ball. Take the pull.
Bad cricket, the critics call this stroke. I don't ;
I call it jolly good. This was the burthen of
C. A. Absolom's argument. You are asked to
deal with an off ball so that it is to be sent where
the bowler has laid on a service of fieldsmen
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