First, a bumpy wicket. By a bumpy wicket I do not mean a fast fiery wicket where the ball only goes over the top of the stumps and raps the knuckles occasionally, but a wicket upon which you may get a shooter one over and a blow on the chest the next, as a pleasing variety to those that come frequently right over your head the first bound and straight into the hands of the long-stop without again touching the ground. I can assure all young players that there is a new and curious sensation in facing balls of this kind. Skill, patience, a quick eye and ready arm are useful for the occasion, but dogged pluck is worth the whole of them. Do not let thoughts of hard knocks trouble you, or your chance of scoring even a double figure will be remote. Take your position at the wicket in your usual way, stand up to the bowling pluckily, and do not have it said of you that you are only a good wicket player. On a ground of this kind every run is valuable, and you may risk stealing a sharp run or two now and then. One of your side may make fifty or more runs, but the average score is sure to be small, and you must face the possibility of hard knocks and play as if you expected every ball to come true and a large score depended upon you. I am glad to be able to say that, owing to the general improvement that has taken place in the principal grounds, you rarely now meet with a bumpy wicket. When the Yorkshire County Eleven made their first appearance at Lord’s in 1870 to play against the M.C.C. and Ground, the wicket was as bumpy as a wicket could be, and very few players on either side escaped knocks of some kind. It was the first match in which the alteration in law 9 came into operation, by which a bowler could change ends twice in the same innings but not bowl more than two overs in succession; and Alfred Shaw and Wootton availed themselves of it in the second innings of Yorkshire. The M.C.C. went in first to the bowling of Freeman and Emmett, and were all out for 73. Yorkshire made 91, George Pinder, the well-known Yorkshire wicket-keeper, who was playing for the first time at Lord’s, contributing 31. The prospect in our second innings was not encouraging, and the wicket anything but good, when that accomplished Essex sportsman, Mr. C. E. Green, joined me; but if ever a good and sterling cricketer played pluckily under adverse circumstances, Mr. Green did that day, and in seventy minutes we scored 99 runs. Freeman bowled a terrific pace, and Emmett was in his glory, his bowling bumping and kicking up as I have never seen it since. We were hit all over the body, Mr. Green twice painfully hard on the chest; but he was cool and cheerful, and made 51 in his best style--and that is saying a great deal considering the number of balls he had to dodge with his head. Just before I was out, last man, Emmett bowled a ball which hit me very hard on the point of the left elbow, the ball flew into the air, and we ran a run before it came down into