behind the wicket, except in the case of hits to third man as mentioned above. (3) Whoever has to shout, let him shout loudly; there is no penalty attaching to a yell, and it is comforting to a man to know his colleague’s intention without any doubt. (4) If a bye is being run, the striker must run straight down the wicket, as he may be saved from being run out by the ball hitting his head instead of the wicket, for which mercy he ought to be duly thankful. (5) On all other occasions run wide of the wicket so as not to cut it up. (6) Always run for a catch if sent reasonably high into the air; if it is caught no harm is done to you, and to be missed and to secure a run in one and the same hit is a veritable triumph. (7) Run the first run as hard as you can, and turn quickly after grounding your bat within the popping crease, for the fieldsman may bungle even the easiest ball, and it is never safe to assume that there can be no second run. We hope that we have now explained the true principles of batting to guide the youthful player in his path. One other word of caution. A young cricketer may go to Lord’s and watch a great match; he may see the giants of the game perform--MacLaren, Ranjitsinhji, Jackson, and Palairet. He will wonder and admire, but let him beware of imitation, which may lead him into innumerable quagmires. In another walk of life, literature, you will find facetious writers who are fond of imitating the style of famous authors, and very amusing the attempts sometimes are; but it is easily seen that the points they successfully imitate are the roughnesses and eccentricities which are frequently characteristic of great authors. An imitator of Carlyle, for instance, revels in the brusque eccentricities of the great man’s style, but he never succeeds in portraying his noble qualities. It is much the same in cricket: genius defies imitation, and is only by poor struggling humanity to be admired. In the prime of his play nothing in cricket was grander than the sight of W. G. Grace scoring two runs off a ball that any other cricketer would have been only too happy to stop. No school coach that understood his business would tell a youth to play certain balls as they are played by Mr. A. G. Steel, who sometimes adopts the most daring methods, and it is not safe to infer that anybody else in the world can play in a like manner. It is so with hitting. Bonnor, Lyons, O’Brien, Ford, and Jessop can hit many balls which the great majority of other cricketers would only venture to play gently forward. Some critics who are great at criticism, but great at nothing else, have been known to shake their heads at some of the methods of great players; but we can assure these gentlemen that real genius admits no more of criticism than it does of imitation. The four never-to-be-violated rules previously mentioned need not trouble the genius at all; no human law need concern him: he is a law to himself,