How many of those favoured mortals who participate in first-class cricket can call to mind instances of brilliant batting, followed up by capital bowling, all to be rendered null and void by the missing of a “sitter” by some lazy fieldsman whose thoughts were anywhere but on the game. Cricketers are but mortals, and catches will be missed as long as the game of cricket is played, but less mistakes would be made, especially in the slips, if fieldsmen would but pay the strictest attention to the game, and not allow their thoughts to wander. That chance that “Cain” gave to third slip, which might have turned defeat into victory, would in all probability have been accepted, had the culprit’s thoughts not been too much engrossed in the choice of theatres that evening for his fiancée; and to such causes as these, if one could but read the thoughts of those at fault, many of the too frequent mistakes could be traced. Too much emphasis cannot be attached to this lack of attention, for one can but judge from one’s own experience. That fielding, the most important branch of the game, has deteriorated during even the past five or six years may be accepted as a true bill, and we can only look for improvement to those who have the rising generation under their charge. No one can expect to become a good fieldsman without assiduous and often irksome practice, and this, combined with the undue prominence bestowed on batting, may account somewhat for the deterioration. A batsman, by scoring 50 runs, feels that he may have had a material hand in the success of his side, and in the same way so does a bowler who takes five or six wickets, for they both have something tangible to show in the score-sheet. True, the fieldsman may have helped the bowler by a brilliant catch or two, but there is no record of the amount of runs he may have saved. Thus it is that a little selfishness may crop up, for whereas the fieldsman may feel that, like the spoke of a wheel, he is only part of a whole, the batsman or bowler feels that he is an individual. Be the reason what it may, there is no doubt that the practice of fielding is much neglected, and as there is not that monotony in it that so frequently crops up in batting achievements, it is difficult to understand the cause of that neglect. When one considers that the best batsman in the world is not absolutely certain of scoring a run, and that a good fieldsman nearly always saves 20 or 30, the importance of fielding can at once be appreciated.