The play, I gather, has improved, and the employment of professionals has doubtless contributed to this result. There is a danger, however, of depending too much on the professionals, who take part in the matches between the clubs. The difficulties of umpiring are overcome in matches for the Border Cup by the assistance of strangers, who truly and indifferently minister justice. In other matches, I am told, the umpires, being members of the rival clubs, are apt to suffer from ‘the personal bias,’ and from accesses of local patriotism. This defect is not absolutely confined to the Border. Football, a game entailing less expenditure of money and time, is naturally better rooted and more flourishing than cricket. It is also less dependent on weather. On the whole, improvement both in skill and in the wickets is to be noted, and I conceive that a match is much less likely than of old to degenerate into a Border brawl. But cricket is not the national game of the country which gave birth to golf and can hold her own at football. FOOTNOTES: [34] The maker of a formidable bat. CHAPTER IX. HOW TO SCORE. (BY W. G. GRACE.) Ask any player who has scored over a hundred in an innings if he felt any particular influence at work on the morning of the match, and he will probably answer in the negative; but press him, and he will admit that he felt fit and well, and that the feeling was owing to a good night’s rest, together with the careful training of days and weeks. I am aware that there are exceptions to this rule, and that players have been known to score largely after a night of high feasting and dancing; but in my own experience, whilst admitting that occasional freaks of this kind have been followed by moderately large scores, I cannot recollect many of my big innings that were not the results of strict obedience to the rules which govern the training for all important athletic contests. Temperance in food and drink, regular sleep and exercise, I have laid down as the golden rule from my earliest cricketing days. I have carefully adhered to this rule, and to it in a great degree I attribute the scores that stand to my name in cricket history, and the measure of health and strength I still enjoy. Early in the season every cricketer knows the difficulty of getting his eye in, but though he may be disappointed at the small score attached to his name match after match, he plays steadily on, trusting that by constant practice the coveted hundred will come. If he hopes to score largely he must be careful in his manner of living and moderate in all things, even though nature may have blessed him with exceptional wrist power and sight.