batsman, though I am inclined to think that a really good bowler ought always to be able to make the ball "nip" a bit. Haigh certainly made the ball turn every now and again on the Wanderers' ground, and both he and Albert Trott have told me that they would infinitely prefer to bowl on the best matting wicket in the world rather than on a really hard, true turf pitch.
But the matting at Johannesburg is good enough for the most fastidious batsman, for it plays very fast, and though the pace of the wicket is apt to put a batsman off on first going in, once a man has got his eye in, he can make any amount of forcing strokes on both sides of the wicket, for the ball does not often hang on the pitch. Drives between cover and extra cover, and push strokes between the bowler and mid-on and past mid-on, can be made with great frequency, while the ball travels to the boundary at a great pace.
Bowlers of the type of Haigh, Tate, or Howell (the Australian) are the most successful on matting wickets, but slow bowlers are not, as a rule, effective, and fast bowlers, unless really great ones, are usually heavily punished.
The ordinary spikes one uses in England are quite useless on the matting, and have to be replaced by a sort of flat nail.
The length of the matting varies in different places, and this, I venture to think, causes great inconvenience. At present the matting may be any length up to 22 yards, and often I found myself
