The prince of hitters now before the public is without doubt F. G. J. Ford, Whose tall, lithe figure is well-known not only on our own grounds, but on those of Australia also. Endowed by nature with 4 enormous reach, and commanding height, he possesses two qualifications which are of great advantage to a hitter. No one on first. seeing him would put him down as a hitter as he does not seem possessed of any superabundance of strength, nor does he appear to have any superfluity of energy; but when they see him indulge in his favourite drive between ' cover" and " nid-off," all doubts as to his being a forcing batsman are at once dispelled. Using his height to the utmost advantage, he gets well over the ball, and comes down on it with the force of a sledge hammer, the spheroid—as some of our cricketing scribes have it,—being driven to the boundary never more than a few fect from the ground, He is a fast footed hitter, though I have seen him career up the pitch to slow bowling, and he seems to be quite as much at home with that method. I have never seen anyone hit fast bowling to square leg with greater facility, and as it is the inclination of many bowlers when a left-hander is batting to howl on the leg side, he gets a great proportion of his runs. on that. side. He rately indulges in lofty hitting, though i i fiery and the bowling' he hay an invaluable strok over third man's" head, perfvetly sife, though many feet in the aix, that brings hin in a few good runs.' One should not judge hitters by the number of figures are very deceptive—as by scoring forty or fifty, the hitter may perhaps have been of more service to is side thin the batsman of the orthodox stamp with, his century. Fords never in a hurry to make runs, though he rarely allows any opportunity of scoring to slip, nnd hits more good length balls than most hitters. He is an extremely difficult to bowl at. One never knows what I to send down; should it be in degree short, he plices that to wally for four, or if it is inclined to ben little too much up, he drives that boundary-wards, also. T have never been lucky enough to hit upon the secret of how to keep him playing quietly, awl there are a good many other bowlers in the same predicament, I trow. The first glimpse T def his prowess was in the Gentlemen Players' match of 1897 at Lords: against the cream of our professional howling carried his bat through both i His second contribution of 7! a Sp exhibition of hitting; the way in which he mastered Ri mon the worn, wicket bein little short of marvellous. Altogether he is the bea wdéal of a' hitter, and has, moreover, What is generally so rare in the' case of " forcing batsman, a strong defence. Should he be in form th son, he should prove a shi sides of the Australian bowlers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.