In the season 1876--one of my best years--I remember playing in three matches following each other when the ground was fast, dry and true. The first match was at Canterbury, for Marylebone C.C. _v._ Kent. Kent made the long score of 473, chiefly owing to the magnificent batting of Lord Harris, who made 154. We responded with the comparatively small total of 144. To follow on with so large a deficit was not encouraging; but the wicket was still everything to be desired in pace and quality, and I made up my mind to play a fast game, knowing that the bowler could get little or no work on the ball, and that any attempt to play carefully for a draw would be useless. It is now a matter of history that we scored the first 100 in forty-five minutes, 217 well under the two hours, and finished up with a total of 557 for nine wickets, converting what appeared to be inevitable defeat into a creditable draw. It took me a little over six hours to make my 344; but so good and fast was the wicket that I played forward to most of the good balls. Two days after, on a similar wicket against Notts, playing for Gloucestershire at Clifton, I made 177, and the same week 318 not out, against Yorkshire at Cheltenham. The last wicket was one of the very best I ever played on, and right through the innings I could play forward without danger to nearly every ball bowled. Remember, then, on a wicket of this kind to play forward as much as possible. I come now to a fast, good, wet wicket. It may surprise a great many players when I say, play almost the same way as upon a fast dry wicket. The bowler has still as much difficulty in getting work on the ball, as it cuts through the ground and he cannot hold it owing to its wet and slippery state, and you will find playing forward the better way. You will have to be a little more watchful, for some balls will keep low and travel at a terrific rate after they pitch, and should you get a shooter it will come to you even faster than, on a dry wicket. Batsmen on our perfect wickets of to-day think a ball that keeps low is a shooter; but I wish they could come across the shooters we used to have at Lord’s ground twenty years ago. They seemed completely to baffle some players, and gave them the impression that the ball, instead of travelling all along the ground, went under it and came up again at the bottom of the wickets.