SYMPTOMS OF A LOSER OF RUNS.--He never follows up the ball, but leans on his bat, or stands sociably by the umpire; he has 20 yards to run from a state of rest, instead of 16, already on the move; he is addicted to checks and false starts; he destroys the confidence of his partner’s running; he condemns his partner to play his worst, because in a state of disgust; he never runs and turns, but runs and stops, or shoots past his wicket, making ones for twos, and twos for threes; he often runs a man out, and, besides this loss, depresses his own side, and animates the other; he makes slow fieldsmen as good as fast; having no idea of stealing a run for the least miss, he lets the fieldsmen stand where they please, saving both the two and the one; he lets the bowler coolly experiment with the wicket, when one run breaks the dangerous series, and destroys his confidence; he spares the bowler that disturbance of his nerves which results from stolen runs and suspicion of his fieldsmen; he continues the depressing influence of maiden Overs, when a Single would dispel the charm; he deserves the name of the “_Green_ man and _Still_,” and usually commences his innings by saying, “Pray don’t run me out, Sir,”--“We’ll run no risks whatever.” When there is a long hit, the same man will tear away like mad, forgetting that both he and his partner (a heavier man perhaps) want a little wind left for the next ball.--_O Ignavum pecus!_ so-called “steady” players. Steady, indeed! You stand like posts, without the least intuition of a run. The true cricketer runs while another is thinking of it; indeed, he does not think--he sees and feels it is a run. He descries when the fieldsman has a long reach with his left hand, or when he must overbalance and right himself, or turn before he can throw. He watches hopefully the end of a long throw, or a ball backed carelessly up.--Bear witness, bowlers, to the virtue of a single run made sharply and vexatiously. Just as your plot is ripe, the batsmen change, and an ordinary length supersedes the very ball that would have beguiled your man. Is it nothing to break in upon the complete Over to the same man? And, how few the bowlers who repeat the length from which a run is made! To repeat, passionless as the catapult, a likely length, hit or not hit, here it is the professional beats the amateur.--“These indirect influences of making each possible run,” says Mr. R. T. King, “are too little considered. Once I saw, to my full conviction, the whole fortune of a game changed by simply effecting two single runs; one, while a man was threatening to throw, instead of throwing, in the ball; the other, while a ball was dribbling in from about middle wicket. This one run ended thirteen maiden Overs, set the bowlers blaming the fieldsmen at the expense, as usual, of their equanimity and precision, and proved the turning-point in a match till then dead against us. Calculate the effect of ‘stolen runs’ on