time that Beldham had shown us the full powers of the bat, and Lord Frederick had (as Fennex always declared) formed his style upon Beldham's; and since now we approach the era of a new school, and the forward play of Fennex,—which his father termed an innovation and presumption 'contrary to all experience',—till the same forward play was proved effectual by Lambert, and Hammond had shown that, in spite of wicket-keepers, bowling, if uniformly slow, might be met and hit away at the pitch; now, we will wait to characterize, in the words of eye-witnesses, the heroes of the contests already mentioned.
On 'the Old Players' I may be brief; because, the few old gentlemen (with one of whom I am in daily communication) who have heard even the names of the Walkers, Frame, Small, and David Harris, are passing away, full of years, and almost all the written history of the Old Players consists in undiscriminating scores.
In point of style the Old Players did not play the steady game, with maiden overs, as at present. The defensive was comparatively unknown: both the bat and the wicket, and the style of bowling too, were all adapted to a short life and a merry one. The wooden substitute for a ball, as in Cat and Dog, before described, evidently implied a hitting, and not a stopping game.
The Wicket, as we collect from a MS. furnished by an old friend to the late William Ward, Esq., was, in the early days of the Hambledon Club, one foot high and two feet wide, consisting of two stumps only, with one stump laid across. Thus, straight balls passed between, and, what we now call, well pitched balls would of course rise over. Where, then, was the encouragement to block, when fortune would so often usurp the place of science? And, as to the bat, look at the picture of cricket as played in the old Artillery Ground; the bat is curved at the end like a hockey-stick, or the handle of a spoon, and—as common implements usually are adapted to the work to be performed—you will readily believe that in olden time the
