never be kept on if he is not getting wickets, and if the batsmen are playing him with ease. It goes no way towards winning a match to bowl ten or a dozen short-pitched consecutive maiden overs. Directly the batsmen seem to have guessed the length and style of bowling it should be changed, if only for a few overs, while some new style is tried for a short time. If a long stand be made, every style of bowling should be quickly tried; thirty runs should never be allowed without a change of some sort, unless the bowling happens to be particularly puzzling to the batsman, and is being badly played.
As regards the placing of the field, it has already been said that usually the bowler is best able to guess where his own bowHng is most likely to be hit; but there are many things which a captain should recollect, as the suggestions of a captain in whom his bowlers place confidence are always accepted readily. He should keep his eye on short-slip, as this place is, especially on a fast wicket, the most important of all. There are more good batsmen dismissed at short-slip and the wicket, on good wickets, than at any other places. It is an extraordinary fact connected with short-slip that, unless he has had a great deal of experience, he is continually shifting his position; one over he will be standing fine and deep and the next square and near to the wicket. It is the captain's duty, even more than the bowler's, to see that this does not happen.
On a true hard wicket we never like to see a captain putting his mid-on or short-leg close in to the batsman, to field what is called 'silly' mid-on; the risk of standing near in on a hard wicket to a batsman who can hit at all is not by any means slight, and we have on several occasions seen men placed in this position get very nasty blows. Boyle, the Australian mid-on, stood about as near in as any man ever did stand; on sticky grounds he made many catches, on fast grounds he missed many which if standing further back he would have caught. He not seldom received nasty injuries, and on one occasion was laid up for several weeks with a broken or injured bone in his hand. A quick active field at mid-on who will run in when he sees the
