A couple of years ago I spent an afternoon in the company of some friends at the school where their son was completing his second term. It was a warm afternoon and we naturally walked down to the cricket field. On the Upper a senior house match, which we should have liked to have watched, was in progress. Our small guide assured us, however, that this would be impossible. 'It isn't our house, you see, and the fellows would think it awful niff of me to watch another house playing. But there's a house game of our own going on down there.' Realising that it was impossible to overcome the novice's fear of doing the wrong thing, we reluctantly, slowly, and with backward glances, followed our young friend to the far end of a big field, where a ridiculous junior house game was being played on a sloping and bumping pitch. The small boy was, however, more interested in his friends than in the cricket. Beyond this game there was the pick up. Now I do not believe that I had ever before watched a pick up at all closely. I had imagined that the cricket would be pretty bad, that firm-footed batsmen would mow full pitches towards long on, that wides would be only more frequent than the fall of wickets, that every third scoring stroke would be in the nature of a chance. I had never, however, anticipated anything approaching the complete impotence of that game. The batsmen could not hit the ball hard, indeed it was only on rare occasions that they managed to connect the bat with the ball. There was no need for any fieldsmen, with the possible exception of long-stop, to stand more than twenty-five yards from the wicket. The bowler's main object appeared to be the keeping down of wides. Every game has its own technique; this game was certainly not cricket as it is played generally, and, no doubt, the victorious side was the one that bowled fewest wides. For no other reason would any captain have kept on either of those two bowlers for a second over.