Having endeavoured to the best of our ability to enunciate a few principles as to defensive tactics, we will now try and discuss offensive tactics, or hitting. A curious feature of the present day is that new hits have come into existence. These have not sprung up because they were not occasionally brought off in earlier days, but formerly when they were the batsman used to apologise to the bowler for having wounded his feelings, and a sort of groan used to be heard all round, as if there had been some gross violation of a cricket commandment. The grounds have improved to such an extent that bowlers have had to resort to new tactics to effect the grand object of all bowlers--namely, to get wickets. A fast bowler has one system of tactics, a medium and slow bowler another. On hard level wickets a fast bowler in these days is very apt to bowl short on the off stump and try and make the ball bump, and to cram a lot of fields in the slips, while the wicket-keeper stands back. The sort of ball that bowls a man out is frequently a ‘yorker.’ This is not the perfection of bowling, it is a bad style that the modern perfect wicket has caused to come in. A bowler who keeps a splendid length with really scientific methods, like Hearne, has his reward in uncertain weather and on catchy wickets, but the baked smooth wickets of modern-day cricket produce such bowlers as Jessop and Jones the Australian, who mainly bowl for catches in the slips--and who can blame them? Slow bowlers have to sacrifice accuracy and length to get twist or break like Trott, the Australian captain, and Hartley the Oxonian, and Wainwright; this is also because the perfect wickets will not allow the combination of length and break. So the bowlers have to cultivate an abnormal break, which cannot be done without the sacrifice of length. [Illustration: FIG. 6.--Gunn cutting.]