Chapter XIV: Appendix: I

THE EDITOR’S DEFENCE OF THIS SYSTEM FOR BEGINNERS AND OTHERS.

“The truth must be insisted on; many a Cricket match has been won
in the bedroom. And even with the ball a good deal may be done. I
could name two eminent batsmen who used, as boys, to wait after the
day’s play was over, and the careless crowd had departed, and in
the pavilion give ten minutes or a quarter of an hour to practising
a particular style of defence, about which more anon; the one
bowled fast sneaks along the floor to the other, at about ten paces
distance. This, too, yielded fruit in its time. Like all other
great achievements, the getting a score against good bowling is the
result of drudgery, patiently, faithfully borne. But the drudgery
of Cricket is itself a pleasure, and let no young cricketer suppose
that he can dispense with it, though some few gifted performers
have done great things with apparently little effort.”

EDWARD LYTTELTON.

I have reserved for an appendix, which I introduce by repeating the above words of sound common sense, a defence of a system of practice based on what the best players actually do. The system will be condemned unless it is understood--and tried.

In games, as in health, it is the commonest acts and parts of acts that most easily escape our notice--that are done least adequately. He who is far beyond and above the alphabet can seldom realise its difficulties for the beginner. The unconscious skill of the expert availeth little, except for analysis and imitation by others. The genius is not likely to be a good teacher. That is no less true of Cricket than of mathematics. The natural player does the thing well, but--he knoweth not how.

A story is told of one of the most famous of Cambridge coaches (alas! now dead), to the effect that a pupil once asked him for lessons in Hebrew. The coach knew no Hebrew, but, thanks to his excellent teaching, he managed to secure his pupil a Second Class in the examination, after which the pupil heard to his surprise that the coach himself had only been one lesson ahead all the time. So here the veriest beginner may feel that I am not far ahead of him--that perhaps in some respects I am behind him, since I have to undo many old and habitual faults. Let him imagine me, at the age of thirty-four, in the midst of a busy life, playing forward vigorously in the privacy of my small bedroom, first with my left foot (with the body-weight) direct along a line again and again, till it moves along that line rapidly almost of its own accord, with only an occasional supervision as of a well-regulated servant; then this together with the quick reaching out of a straight bat in dangerous proximity to my left foot (which now lunges safely, surely, rapidly on its line), while my left elbow comes well to the front at full stretch. In fact, let him picture me practising for a few minutes morning after morning, with ever-decreasing difficulty, all that the best exponents seem to do so naturally and easily. He would see me ready to start and starting at hundred yards’ pace here there or anywhere, as Mr. Vernon Royle used to stand and start at cover; or extending now this arm, and now that, up, down, out to imaginary balls, and then throwing these in at once just above imaginary bails (which will be spots on the wall-paper).

“It is not thus that _Cricket_ is learnt,” I hear the genius say. Yet it was thus--partly thus--that my Racquets and Tennis were learnt, and I for my part shall try to learn Cricket thus also; and I shall advise others who are as backward as I am to try thus. If the plan be wrong, yet at least I am putting it into action in my own case, so as to make as much a part of me as I can those movements that seem always to have been a part of the born experts, who are my models, and whose expertness has hitherto been regarded as beyond hope. I do not mean fancy strokes, such as the risky glide, but the ordinary and common strokes, the “nine out of ten,” for which the many mechanical workings are buried so securely deep in the sub-conscious minds of the skilful, that there is needed a thorough probing and cutting up by the anatomist if ever the secrets are to be laid bare.

There must be no reliance on mere theories; actual models and photographs of models have been and are to be the basis of my advice and of my own steady practice. Photographs are less likely to err than the opinions of those whose chief merit is to do well rather than to teach well or even to know well.

But, though the most careful analysis has been made, and though I myself shall do whatever I urge the beginner to try, yet the advice will all be put forward as worth a fair trial--no more, at least for purposes of Cricket. For purposes of physical development, health, control of the body and of the will, and so on, I think that every such exercise can safely be recommended to most people. I cannot believe that a few minutes each day would do any Anglo-Saxon boy or man any appreciable harm, if only the rapidity and extension be increased gently and sensibly.

My point of view is entirely new. I come to the reader not as a good batsman, bowler, or fielder. I was what may be called a Public School and College cricketer, and poor at that! In my last season of College Cricket I made one or two centuries and got well over my hundred wickets; but all this I did in the most atrocious style. And I gave up the game many years ago. Why then do I dare to offer hints?

Let me repeat that, as a player of Racquets and Tennis, in spite of much play, I still used to exhibit practically every serious fault except a bad eye, weakness, and indifference to success. As I have confessed or boasted elsewhere, and as anyone who saw me would confirm, the positions and movements of my feet, legs, trunk, shoulder, arm, wrist, and fingers were incorrect; and I used to let my eye wander from the ball. These faults I found out; and I afterwards found out that my faults in Cricket were closely akin to these. Now comes the interesting argument. I taught myself and am teaching myself what is less incorrect. I practised and am practising sedulously, to a great extent outside the court, and especially in my bedroom. I chose good models in Racquets and Tennis--for example, Latham and Fairs; I analysed their strokes, watching part by part, asking questions, accepting kind advice, listening to sane or mad theory. I tried to master each part of the mechanism, at first by itself, then with other parts, at times repeating with concentration, at times exaggerating the opposite fault. There cannot be the slightest doubt that I _am_ mastering the mechanism of these racket-games.

Incidentally I may mention that these two games taught me many
useful principles for Cricket-practice: the right positions of the
legs; the art of running side-ways with the eyes looking forwards;
the formation and preservation of that correct pose and poise which
may be called “the ready”; the use of the straight right leg and
firm right foot as a pivot; the body-swing from the hips; the
shoulder-jerk; the forearm snap in contrast to the mere
wrist-flick, which of course is also extremely useful, as in
peg-top whipping; the wrist-flick itself, especially at the last
moment; the habit of not taking the ball too far in front of one
except when one wishes to hit high; the follow through; the fast
full extension with power but without loss of balance or else
followed by rapid recovery of balance.

As a player of Cricket I used to suffer from similar and equally fundamental hindrances to success; most of these I believe that I have now found out. I shall give myself nearly two years in which to correct these faults and to embody and infibre the best positions and movements that I can learn from the actual play of the best models (Abel, Hirst, Shrewsbury, and many others besides), as shown in practice and in their photographs. Much of this apprenticeship will take place in my bedroom. All the time I shall continue to watch, to ask questions, to study theories; I shall try to keep up to date both in my learning and in my advice in this volume if future editions should be needed.

In a word, I write and shall write not for genius-players so much as for players like myself. For genius-players, the Lytteltons, Steel, Ranjitsinhji, Grace, and others have already written infinitely better than I ever could. I have no ambition to supersede these great authorities except in so far as I must set the evidence of the camera and of the muscles themselves above theoretical opinion. Even here I wish to show the foundation of fact underlying the superstructure of dogma.

Similarly in Tennis I have read and heard again and again the
theory that the head of the racket must be kept above the level of
the wrist, in spite of the common practice of Lambert and Latham.
The truth here is that the wrist should be firm. So with the late
cut: the theory that it is a wrist-stroke only is not altogether
absurd--the wrist may play an important part even if it is kept
nearly or quite rigid (the power and direction being given by the
shoulder, forearm, etc.).

The reader must not misunderstand my contention. If I think that most experts do so-and-so, this carries little weight; if the experts themselves think that they do some other so-and-so, this carries little weight either. The question is what the experts actually do. If the reader after careful study of these or any other photographs and after careful observation of these or any other experts shall decide that the experts actually do something different, then let him practise that something rather than what I suggest. Only let him not confuse me with a doctor who prescribes all sorts of drugs with apparent confidence yet himself would not swallow a tithe of them. In a tentative and truth-seeking spirit I suggest only that which I shall myself use daily with heart and soul; and I shall suggest it only as deserving of a fair trial before condemnation. By their fruits ye shall know them; and so shall I. The fact that I am going to submit myself to such apprenticeship would show at least this--that I am convinced of the need of such apprenticeship for duffers like myself, and that, if I had a son of my own, I would put him through such an apprenticeship before he had much chance of falling into those bad habits under which I myself laboured so long and so unhappily. I should teach him to master, with me, elements not only of the language of his tongue, but also of the language of his whole body; I would practise, with him, many positions and movements and extensions of feet, legs, trunk, shoulder, forearm, wrist, and neck--to fit him for Cricket and other games. In some practices I should err. But here, as in matters of diet, I should treat him as I should like to be treated, teach him as I should like to be taught, were I in his place; teach him as I--for want of better knowledge--shall teach myself; urge him to do only what I myself have done or am doing.

It is simply in this spirit, in the spirit of an experimenting and enthusiastic fellow-learner, that I approach my readers--all except the genius-cricketers, unless these wish to be teachers also. As almost the only self-made Racquet player and Tennis player who knows every single step of his own slow journey out of a hopelessly dark jungle of hampering errors into a comparatively clear and light country, a journey elaborated during a very busy life of reading, writing, and teaching, I can speak with weight. I can honestly say that all my thousands of Racquet and Tennis foot-exercises, shoulder-jerks, body-swings, and so on, in bedrooms and elsewhere, have been well worth while; and that those which I am now doing and shall do for Cricket will be well worth while for many reasons, including physical development and personal appearance (I do not mind what others think of it so much as what I think of it!), health, enjoyment, and hope.

I only dare speak for myself, because games, and therefore practice for games, are to me so much of all that seems best--possibly far too much. To others a similar preparation and practice might be sheer drudgery and slavery. To me they are at their worst a discipline--which I know I need--and an invaluable lesson that much work must be done of which the results will not show for years, but without which the naturally unskilful person like myself may never be able to show any appreciable results at all.

Speaking for myself, I shall not be content with trying to learn batting. I want to bowl and to field and to watch, and to enjoy all these parts, and to do them well enough to avoid the look of boredom which I see on so many faces on the Cricket-field. My egotism in these pages will be pardoned because I am genuinely anxious to improve myself and others--our physique, our standard of play, our enjoyment.

Let me here answer two objections made by friends of mine to whom I have told my plan. The first has already occurred to most readers. It is that I shall never become a good cricketer. This was precisely what every critic with one exception, Smale, the late Racquet coach at Wellington College, bless him! asserted confidently about my Racquets and Tennis as well as my Cricket! My style was so bad as to be beyond hope. Smale told me many of my faults and, as I said just now, I went for them and “stuck to it” for month after month, with the result that in America, where people are quick to observe and detect faults, I was frequently told, not that my feet were always in the wrong position and unprepared, but that they were nearly always in the right position and prepared, in “the ready.” “I can’t catch you on the hop”--that was the common compliment. If I achieved this for Racquets and Tennis, if I made the (at first) utterly unnatural movements so easy, so habitual, so automatic, so sub-conscious, so nearly inevitable, that not one in a hundred people will now believe that I ever had any difficulty or serious fault here; then why not in Cricket also? And, if _I_ can, then I believe any one can.

The objection may be put more mildly, it being held that I should only be a “laboured” player. But am I a laboured Racquet and Tennis player now? Is not the labour past? Are not the positions and movements now my very own? I can seldom convince people that they ever were laboured, that I once was among the clumsiest of all.

Or it might be asserted that though I mastered the individual parts of movements--no one dares to deny that I could do this--yet the parts would not work together. “The secret of playing forward is to throw all the full weight forward together.” Now, though I began each part of the Tennis stroke separately and mastered it _per se_, yet I regularly and habitually combine these parts into a unity to-day. Tennis certainly seems to me to need the full weight at the right moment: I am repeatedly told that I seem to use _all_ my weight in my strokes. And, if here, why not at Cricket? I fail to see any radical difference, though I do see that my distance from the ball must be different: but that is what I intend to get over! I also see that I must not lift the ordinary ball; but with my left elbow well forward I hope to stop that defect in batting; even in Tennis I try not to lift the ball much more than is necessary.

The second objection is that the game is not worth this drudgery: this is the objection chiefly of those who do not play games, or who have played them well without apprenticeship, or who have played them badly without apprenticeship or else after bad apprenticeship. This objection I answer in another chapter. It is a personal matter, and depends on what the game (and success in it) means for the individual--what it does and will do for him. To me Cricket (and success in it) would mean a very important benefit for the whole of my life, just as Racquets and Tennis (and improvement at them) have already done, and in these I have not nearly come to the top of my game yet. As to drudgery, lists of battles and dates and names and places would be drudgery to me; so would weight-lifting and other strain-exercises; so would society at-homes; but fast full-movements and extensions, control of my weight and balance, _for a few minutes each day_, are not drudgery to me, especially if I am stripped and have plenty of air and light, and an ambition or two in view.

I should be sorry to see Cricket reduced to the level of a school study, but I should be still more sorry to see it given up altogether. Why has it decayed so much? Why is there this apathy even among the (ordinary) players themselves? We are wont to hear the blame ascribed to Lawn Tennis, Golf, Cycling, Croquet, and to the expensiveness of Cricket in time as well as in money. But to me it is patent that the real cause of the decay lies deeper, lies nearer home, just as the real cause of physical decay lies nearer home than in the murky atmosphere of a nerve-harassing city. The source is within ourselves.

People do not play the game well enough to enjoy it as much as they enjoy their other games and exercises--or their laziness and “amusements.” And behind this low standard of play (and hence of enjoyment) is the fact that they have not yet mastered and appropriated the alphabet of Cricket.

I have never yet heard of anyone who systematically divided Cricket strokes into a number of parts, persevered in assimilating each part, combined and co-ordinated the parts; and then, even then, looked out for faults to be corrected by a similar process. I have scarcely ever read or heard of a sensible analysis of any Cricket stroke, except by a few such writers as Mr. C. B. Fry (for we must put on one side the nonsense that the late cut is done only with the wrist: that is not analysis but bad guess-work). And this, too, although any stroke _can_ be analysed.

I will go further. I have never yet read or heard of the following advice (let the reader tell me if it has ever been given): that, if a beginner must or will do the full stroke at once, he should concentrate on each part of it in turn, now on the left foot again and again, now on the left elbow, and so on; somewhat as--to repeat a comparison--the conductor might during rehearsals concentrate his attention on each instrument in turn, now on the first violin, now on the ’cello, and so on. The end and aim would be a perfect whole; but each part must first be perfected if ever a complete harmony is to result.

Now why should there not be at every decent school, if not in every decent home, a drill for games? A few foundation-movements were suggested in the “Training of the Body” (Appendix II.). I remember a deadly dull drill of monotonous rhythmical both-sides-together exercises at two private schools; the compulsory drill for first-year-students at Yale College in America was better, but still far from fascinating. Why was there no swift lunge for the left foot in a straight line; no throwing in all directions with each hand in turn; no wrist-turning (as suggested in “Daily Training”); no starting out and then back and then sideways; no running similarly? In a word, why was there no drill at all in view of those games and sports in which every single British boy I have ever met would love to be able to excel; why was there no sort or kind of apprenticeship for Cricket or other athletics? The drill was not even healthy--did not make us lively and fresh. It was the acme of dreary discipline.

Every true British subject is at least slightly annoyed when England is beaten; when it is shown that we, _the_ nation of game-players, who play habitually at schools and elsewhere, play--let us recognise the truth--not very well. Most of us have many important muscle-groups absolutely or partially undeveloped; nor will the few repetitions of any movement, in a wrong manner, tend to develop these groups. We rely on the unreliable--especially the wrist. Our very foundations are out of course; our feet and our bodies are wrongly posed, wrongly poised, slow to extend, slow to change, slow to bend.

No book tells us to develop our muscles rightly _before_ we play games _constantly_. Right practice in bedrooms and elsewhere would be most valuable for Cricket and other games, and for development; as far as I can tell--and I believe I have studied all known systems--it would be no less valuable for physical and mental health and vigour than any of these systems; granted a keenness for success in games, it would be far less dull. We need not practise to an American University extreme. My many hours’ work each day is a safeguard against that extreme for me. But, for the sake of the self and the side and the nation, I cannot but feel that if games are to be compulsory, then we had far better teach them well, and so raise the standard of excellence and with it the standard of interest and pleasure. We need not give more time: we might give many hours less time each week (I shall find less than ten minutes ample for most days). But we _must_ give more sense, more care, if we are to hold our own as a nation of all-round cricketers and a nation of healthy all-round men.