It was only after writing as above that I read that in “North _v._ South,” 1851, the North lost six wickets, and the South two, by running out! In the first Gentlemen and Players’ match, of the same year, it was computed that one man, who made a long score, actually lost as many runs as he made! In choosing an eleven, such men should be marked, and the loser of runs avoided on the same principle as a bad fieldsman. Reckon not only the runs a man may make, but the runs he may lose, and how the game turns about sometimes by a man being run out. A perfect cricketer, like a perfect whist-player, must qualify his scientific rules, and make the best of a bad partner--but, how few are perfect, especially in this point! Talk not alone of good batsmen, I have often said.--Choose me some thorough-bred public-school cricketers; for, “the only men,” says Clarke, “I ever see judges of a run, are those who have played cricket as boys with sixpenny bats, used to distances first shorter, then longer as they grew stronger, and learnt, not from being bowled to by the hour, but by years of practice in real games. You blame me because the All England Eleven don’t learn not to run out, though always practising together. Why, a run is a thing not learnt in a day. There’s that gentleman yonder--with all his fine hitting he is no cricketer; he can’t run; he learnt at a catapult, and how can a catapult teach a man the game?” Great men have the same ideas, or Clarke would seem to have borrowed from Horace “Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit.” A good innings disdains a sleeping partner. Be alive and moving; and--instead of saying, “Well played!” “Famous hit!” &c.; or, as we sometimes hear in the way of encouragement, “How near!” “What a close shave!” “Pray, take care, Smith!”--think of the runs, and say “run” or “stop” as the case may be. Thus, you may avoid the ludicrous scene of two big men rushing from their wickets, pausing, turning back, starting again, and having a small talk together at the eleventh yard, and finding, one or the other, a prostrate wicket, while apologies and recrimination are the only solace. Old players need keep up a habit of throwing and of active movements. For, the redundant spirit and buoyancy of youthful activity soon evaporates. Many a zealous cricketer loses his once-famed quickness from mere disuse--_Sic omnia fatis, in pejus ruere_. Instead of always batting, and practising poor Hillyer and Wisden till their dodges are dodges no more, and it is little credit to score from them, go to your neighbour’s wicket and practise fielding for an hour, or else, next match, you may find your throwing at fault.