The principal injuries sustained are in the fingers; though, I did once know a gentleman who played in spectacles, and seeing two balls in the air, he caught at the shadow, and nearly had the substance in his face. The old players, in the days of underhand bowling, played without gloves; and Bennet assured me he had seen Tom Walker, before advancing civilisation made man tender, rub his bleeding fingers in the dust. The old players could show finger-joints of most ungenteel dimensions; and no wonder, for a finger has been broken even through tubular india-rubber. Still, with a good pair of cricket gloves, no man need think much about his fingers; albeit flesh will blacken, joints will grow too large for the accustomed ring, and finger-nails will come off. A spinning ball is the most mischievous; and when there is spin and pace too (as with a ball from Mr. Fellowes, which you can hear humming like a top) the danger is too great for mere amusement; for when, as in the Players’ Match of 1849, Hillyer plays a bowler a foot away from his stumps, and Pilch cannot face him--which is true when Mr. Fellowes bowls on any but the smoothest ground--why then, we will not say that any thing which that hardest of hitters and thorough cricketer does, is not cricket, but certainly it is anything but _play_. Some of the worst injuries of the hands occur rather in fielding than in batting. A fine player of the Kent Eleven, about three years ago, so far injured his thumb that one of the joints was removed, and he has rarely played since. Another of the best gentleman players broke one of the bones of his hand in putting down a wicket: but, strangest of all, I saw one of the Christchurch eleven at Oxford, in 1835, in fielding at Cover, split up his hand an inch in length between his second and third fingers: still, all was well in a few weeks.