stake to cover them, but the practice cannot have comforted the losers much. Nowadays the club pays players out of the subscribed funds.
Why the single-wicket game is all given up is hard to say, for it is an age of individual emulation, but we are content with the better part of the game of eleven a-side. And when first was that number, which seems to have some constant attraction for the cricketer, introduced? We cannot tell. It seems usual from the dawn of history. Moreover, the length of the pitch was always, so far as the historic eye can pierce, twenty-two yards—twice eleven, and twice eleven inches was the height of the stumps when they were first raised from the foot-high wicket.
Mr. Budd told Mr. Pycroft of a curious single-wicket match in which he was something more than magna, even maxima, pars. It was against Mr. Braund, for fifty guineas. Mr, Braund was a tremendously fast bowler. "I went in first, and, scoring seventy runs, with some severe blows on the legs—nankin knees and silk stockings, and no pads in those days—I consulted my friend and knocked down my wicket, lest the match should last to the morrow, and I be unable to play"—on account of the injuries to his nankin knees, I suppose, "Mr. Braund was out without a run, I went in again, and making the seventy up to a hundred, I once more knocked down my own wicket, and once more my opponent failed to score."
Another interesting match that Mr. Pycroft records was Mr. Osbaldeston and William Lambert
