Page:The Cricket Field (1854).djvu/236

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212
THE CRICKET FIELD.

middle wicket. This one run ended thirteen maiden Overs, set the bowlers blaming the fieldsmen at the expense, as usual, of their equanimity and precision, and proved the turning-point in a match till then dead against us. Calculate the effect of 'stolen runs' on the powers of a bowler and his tactics as against a batsman, on the places of the fieldsmen, on their insecurity when hurried, and the spirit it puts into the one party and takes away from the other; and add to this the runs evidently lost; and, I am confident that the same Eleven that go out for sixty would, with better running, generally make seventy-five, and not uncommonly a hundred."

Attend, therefore, to the following rules:—1. Back up every ball as soon as actually delivered, and as far as consistent with safe return. 2. When both men can see the ball, as before wicket, let the decision depend on the batsman, as less prepared to start, or on the elder and heavier man, by special agreement; and let the decision be the partner's when the ball is behind the hitter. 3. Let men run by some call mere beckoning with strangers leads to fatal errors, backing up being mistaken for "run." "Yes," "no," or "run," "stop," are the words. "Away" sounds like "stay." 4. Let the hitter also remember that he can often back up a few yards in anticipation of a ball passing the fields-