bowler; and rightly too, especially if he be of medium pace, or even slow medium, on a great variety of wickets, ranging from the fiery, cast-iron, stone-strewn rock of an Old Trafford wicket (I don't mean for a second that the Old Trafford ground is often in this state, but when it is, it is a little faster, a little more susceptible of bump, than anywhere else I know) down to Bristol or Southampton after a wet day, he is invariably of supreme assistance to his side. And what a number of graduated shades of differing wickets there are, from the sun-scorched cracking clay, where the fast bowler finds your fingers, or failing these your ribs, where your runs are made through the slips or first hop over their heads to the boundary, down through the varying degrees of good, natural, fast wickets to the Valhalla of batsmen, let us say Taunton, the Oval, or Bristol, where the ball rarely rises stump high, and where there is as much life in the wickets as there is in a barrel of oysters! On grounds like these the batsman assuredly cometh into his own, and metaphorically layeth the bowler by the heel, bruising him hip and thigh through the weary hours of an August day, till the welcome news of the last over revives the rag of a man that is left, and he slowly wends his way to the rabbit-hutch, in sore need of the well-earned bath and its ensuing rub down—in sore need of a ginger beer. Perhaps there are too many of these superexcellent wickets; perhaps, from certain batsmen's point of view, there are not. But the moment the rain appears, the bowler is another being; in the language of the card-room, he wears a
