Page:Cricket (Steel, Lyttelton).djvu/164

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142
CRICKET.

and does not show any signs of making a mistake. The bowler goes round the wicket, and although he still continues to pitch a little outside the off stump, the ball is quite different now from what it was from over the wicket. It is, of course, impossible to get as much 'break-back' spin on to the ball when bowling round as over the wicket, because the ball is delivered several feet from a straight line between the two wickets, but in most conditions of the ground it is possible to get a certain amount on. The change in the direction of the ball, or rather in the spot from which it is delivered, combined with the diminution in the amount of break, makes it often a most effective change and one well worth the trial. In addition there is always from round the wicket the chance of a batsman playing inside a ball which, delivered without any spin at all, keeps going across the wicket, as it is technically called, 'with the arm.'

We cannot omit, when enumerating the different balls of which a slow bowler may avail himself, one which is by no means used as often as it should be, viz. the full-pitch. In slow bowling there are three different kinds of full-pitches—the highdropping full-pitch, which will pitch either on the top of the wicket or a few inches before it; the ordinary slow full-pitch, which reaches the batsman about the height of his knees; and the medium-paced full-pitch, which will hit the stumps nearly at the top. The high-dropping full-pitch is a ball that is seldom used, the reason for its rarity probably being the extreme difficulty of bowling it accurately and the certain punishment it will meet with if it falls at all short either in height or length of what it should be. It should be delivered as high as possible; there is no limit to the height this ball may go in the air, as the higher it ascends the more difficult it is to play. It should be bowled so that it reaches its highest point when it is almost directly over the head of the batsman, and should pitch orf the very top of the stumps. It is strange that this ball is not more often practised by slow bowlers, as, especially to the pokey, nervous style of batsmen, it is fraught with considerable uneasiness and requires some skill to play