George Hirst, I think, stands in a section of fast bowlers entirely his own. It is a curious thing that we possess so few really fast left-handers. Hirst is equipped not only with great pace, but also with an extraordinary swerve, that is to say, he does not always have it under his immediate control, but when starting fresh and with a new ball, he swirls inwards in a stump-uprooting manner, and the swerve seems to take place in the last two or three yards of the ball’s flight. I remember seeing Captain Bush confront him last year at Leeds for the first time. Hirst came up to the wicket with his swinging run, the ball left his hand; Bush’s left leg shot out for his slashing stroke by cover, and it was only by astonishing luck that at the very last moment he stopped a yorker almost behind his right foot, and in stopping it overbalanced and lay prone—thus emphasising the luck he had experienced and the amount of the swerve. With a new ball it usually stays with him from twenty minutes to an hour, and it can occur again after a sufficient rest and the acquisition of another new ball. I think I am doing Rhodes no injustice when I say that for some time now Hirst has dismissed, largely through this swerve of his, more of the first five or six batsmen than have fallen to his, Wilfred’s, lot. Of all the really fast amateur bowlers none have given me so much pleasure to watch as Sam Woods. At Brighton College they tell me he was quite as fast as he ever was afterwards all through his first-class career as a bowler. Personally I experienced the same luck as many another would-be run-getter who met him for the first time, that is to say, I went in to bat and came out again without having heard the sound of the bat striking the ball, b. Woods 0! The pace was bewildering. At his best and in full health he was as fast as an ordinary player cares to encounter. Exceedingly even in temper for a fast bowler, there were only one or two little things that really worried him. One, however, was to see a man draw away as he came up to the crease with those short shuffling strides he always adopted. I shall never forget one day at Fenner’s in some trial match a rather nervous performer against fast bowling wobbled to the wicket. Sam was bowling _over_ the wicket, and the newcomer, who practically relied on a very late cut for scoring purposes, promptly planted him for two or three fours through the slips, having first withdrawn, at the approach of “the Terror,” in the direction of the square leg umpire. The same sliding motion at right angles to the wicket, the same stroke, the same lucky four, and Sam goes round the wicket. If fast at first, he is faster now, and the nervous player is still more nervous. The ball comes down well clear of the leg stick, and is cut _behind the wicket and between the wicket and the stumper!_—a truly miraculous stroke, and one that I have never seen executed save on this solitary occasion. Four! but the next was