has been a rapid one; he may hear an ominous ‘click’ that sounds like a touch, and yet he may think that he saw daylight between them at the moment the ball passed the bat. We have more than once in a first-class match, in which two good umpires were engaged, struck a ball fairly hard and seen it lodge in the wicket-keeper’s hands, and heard in answer to a confident appeal, ‘Not out; he was nowhere near it!’ and this when everyone in the field heard the sound, and knew it could only have been caused by the ball meeting the bat. And again, supposing a slight noise or ‘click’ to be heard just when a ball is passing outside the legs of a batsman, should the ball be taken by the wicket-keeper, it is often a most difficult thing for an umpire to be certain whether the ‘click’ has been caused by the bat and the ball, or the batsman’s leg or pad-strap and the ball. The click of the ball hitting a strap or hard piece of cane in a pad is very like the sharp sound caused by the bat hitting the ball, and this, added to the impossibility of the umpire actually seeing whether a leg ball passes close to the bat or not, makes appeals for leg-side catches at the wicket extremely hard to answer with any degree of certainty. These are a few instances of the many very difficult cases which an umpire may be called upon to decide at any moment during a match. Many others will probably occur to the minds of most of the readers of this chapter, at any rate of those who have any practical experience of the game. We do not, however, propose to mention all these cases at present; some of them we shall have to refer to later on.