hard one, glanced off from his forehead—he called out "Catch it," and it was caught by bowler! He was not hurt—not even marked by the ball.
Four was scored at Beckenham, 1850, by a hit that glanced off Point's head; but the player suffered much in this instance.
A spot under the window of the tavern at Lord's was marked as the evidence of a famous hit by Mr. Budd, and when I played, Oxford v. Cambridge, in 1836, Charles, son of Lord F. Beauclerk, hitting above that spot elicited the observation from the old players. Beagley hit a ball from his Lordship over a bank 120 yards. Freemantle's famous hit was 130 yards in the air. Freemantle's bail was once hit up and fell back on the stump: Not out. A similar thing was witnessed by a friend on the Westminster Ground. "One hot day," said Bayley, "I saw a new stump bowled out of the perpendicular, but the bail stuck in the groove from the melting of the varnish in the sun, and the batsman continued his innings." I have seen Mr. Kirwan hit a bail thirty yards. A bail has flown forty yards.
I once chopped hard down upon a shooter, and the ball went a foot away from my bat straight forward towards the bowler, and then, by its rotary motion, returned in the same straight line exactly, like the "draw-back stroke" at billiards, and shook the bail off.
