Page:Cricket (Steel, Lyttelton).djvu/200

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178
CRICKET.

against this system, and even went so far as to say, 'I will not be one of a team that wins its matches by such means,' unfair bowling would soon die out.

On the subject of throwing we can learn something from the. Australians. Perhaps it is the only subject connected with the spirit in which the game should be played wherein they are able to give us much assistance, but we ought for that reason to be all the more willing to take any advice which they or their system can afford us.

Now in Australia unfair bowling is absolutely unknown. Directly a bowler begins to develop the slightest tendency to throwing he is tabooed. One can traverse the whole of Australia and watch the numerous clubs in all parts of the country without ever seeing a bowler who is even verging on the line of 'throwing.' It is hard to understand why this state of affairs does not exist in the mother country. It will be well for everyone to realise that, if this question is allowed to drift on from year to Doubtful delivery.

year without any senous protest from public opinion, it will become absolutely necessary for the committee of the M.C.C. to do something in the matter. What this should be is, as we have said, very doubtful, and many and varied would be the opinions of competent judges as to the form of legislation that would meet the evil. It can almost be taken for granted that it is impossible satisfactorily to define a throw, and even if this were not so the solution of the question would be no nearer, as there would be just the same difficulties in the way of an umpire saying that a bowler came within the definition as there is now in saying that he throws. What is wanted is to get rid of throwers in small club and village matches, and then we should never get them drafted into first-class cricket.