CHAPTER XXXVIII 



CRICKET PAST AND PRESENT 



Mr Brodrick, Secretary of State for India, at a cricket 

 club dinner in 1904 suggested a revision of the rules 

 of cricket which would prevent batsmen having it all 

 their own way, and strongly advocated raising the stumps 

 an inch. 



Whenever the bat appears to have gained an ascendency 

 over the ball, someone advocates drastic measures of reform. 

 Then comes a wet season, with low scoring and triumphs 

 for the bowler, and the reformers are silenced. The notion 

 of heightening or widening the stumps is no new one. It 

 was seriously put forward a few years ago, and there was 

 a hot controversy over it. But the common sense of the 

 majority prevailed. 



In the year 1836, when Alfred Mynn made his first 

 appearance for the Gentlemen against the Players, the 

 superiority of the latter was so great that, to make the 

 match equal, it was arranged that the Gentlemen should 

 defend wickets 22 inches by 6 inches, and the Players 

 wickets 27 inches by 7 inches. But the Gentlemen only 

 scored 57 and 60 in their two innings, against the 151 of 

 the Players in their single innings. Then it was decided 

 that this alteration of the fundamental rules of the game 

 was as useless as it was distasteful, and the plan was 

 never tried again. 



No doubt the perfection to which cricket-pitches have 

 now attained makes the bowler's task harder: but, takincr 

 one season with another, the trundler still holds his own. 

 Admirers of the round-arm bowling, of which Mynn, 

 Redgate, Lilly white, Tarrant, Jackson, and Freeman were 

 such brilliant exponents, declare that it was far deadlier 



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