22 inches by 6, at which measure it remained till about 1814, when it was increased to 26 inches by 8, and again to its present dimensions of 27 inches by 8 in 1817; when, as one inch was added to the stumps, two inches were added to the width between the creases. In the year 1700, the runner was made out, not by striking off the transverse stump we can hardly call it a bail—but by popping the ball in the hole therein represented.
David Harris's bowling, Fennex used to say, introduced, or at least established and fixed, a steady and defensive style of batting. 'I have seen,' said Sparkes, 'seventy or eighty runs in an innings, though not more than eight or nine made at Harris's end.' 'Harris,' said an excellent judge, who well remembers him, 'had nearly all the quickness of rise and height of delivery, which characterizes over-hand bowling, with far greater straightness and precision. The ball appeared to be forced out from under his arm with some unaccountable jerk, so that it was delivered breast-high. His precision exceeded anything I have ever seen, insomuch that Tom Walker declared that, on one occasion, where turf was thin, and the colour of the soil readily appeared, one spot was positively uncovered by the repeated pitching of David's balls in the same place." 'This bowling,' said Sparkes, 'compelled you to make the best of your reach forward; for if a man let the ball pitch too near and crowd upon him, he very rarely could prevent a mistake, from the height and rapidity with which the ball cut up from the ground.'—This account agrees with the well-known description of Nyren (on pages 75-76).
And Nyren agrees with my informants in ascribing great improvements in batting, and he specifies 'particularly in stopping ' (for the art of defence, we said, was not essential to the batsman in the ideas of one of the old players), to the bowling of David Harris, and bears testimony to an assertion, that forward play, that is meeting at the pitch balls considerably short of a half
