The present day boundaries ace a disadvantage to our bowlers of the present time, a disadvantage under which bowlers of the past did not labour, If we could only "ce these great bowlers of the pus', with 30 years knocked off their lives, appear on our best yrounds in a run: getting season, how "would they fare Suceessful they might be, but I feel pretty confident that with so many more good batsmen to defeat, with so many more billiard tables upon which to bowl, with perhaps four times the number of matches ty play in a season, and with boundaries to assist the stout and old wielders of the willow, they wond meet with nothing like the same success ax was theirs in their day. On the other hand what would Richardson, Lockwood, Jack Hearne, Mead, Peel, Brigys, Ottewell, Lehmann and Mold have done thirty years ago although I must not overlook the fact that over-hand bowling, that is to say a delivery higher than' the shoulder, was not allowed then; bat does not that very law then in force tell us very plainly that over jund bowling was too dangerous, owing to the imperfectness of the wickets, and' those days there was never any talk of the bat having a mastery over the ball. When comparing our bowlers of to-day with those of the past, let us take all those fresh diticulties which our bowlers have to meet season after season, into serious consideration. It may interest some to know that on my once asking a well-known old cricketer if our cricket was better to-day, he replied—"most decidedly, yes." Averages too, so far as batsmen are concerned, must be fur more fallacious than used to be the case, for some have the advantage of playing on much truer wickets with easier boundaries than have others. For instance, when, not so long ago, drawn games were the order of the day on so many of our grounds, they nevertheless were played out at Lord's owing no doubt to the fact that the ground was scarcely ever watered, and in consequence had a deal of life in it. The
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.