Peter Heward, an excellent wicket-keeper of Leicester,--of the same day as Henry Davis, one of the finest and most graceful hitters ever seen, as Dakin, or any midland player will attest,--once observed to me, “Players are apt to forget that a bad bowler may bowl one or two balls as well as the best; so, to make a good average, you must always play the same guarded and steady game, and take care especially when late in the season.” “Why late in the season?” “Because the ground is damp and heavy--it takes the spring out of good bowling, and gives fast underhand bowling as many twists as it has hops, besides making it hang on the ground. This game is hardly worth playing it is true; but a man is but half a player who is only prepared for true ground.” “We do not play cricket,” he continued, “on billiard tables; wind and weather, and the state of the turf make all the difference. So, if you play to win, play the game that will carry you through; and that is a straight and upright game; use your eyes well; play not at the pitch, nor by the length, but always (what few men do) at the ball itself, and never hit or ‘pull the ball’ across wicket.” Next as to the _half-volley_. This is the most delightful of all balls to hit, because it takes the right part of the bat, with all the quickness of its rise or rebound. Any player will show you what a half-volley is, and I presume that every reader has some living lexicon to explain common terms. A half-volley, then, is very generally hit in the air, soaring far above every fieldsman’s head; and to know the power of the bat, every hitter should learn so to hit at pleasure. Though, as a rule, _high hits make a low average_. But I am now to speak only of hitting half-volleys along the ground. Every time you play forcibly at the pitch of a ball you have more or less of the half-volley; so this is a material point in batting. The whole secret consists partly in timing your hit well, and partly in taking the ball at the right part of the rise, so as to play the ball down without wasting its force against the ground. Every player thinks he can hit a half-volley along the ground; but if once you see it done by a really brilliant hitter, you will soon understand that such hitting admits of many degrees of perfection. In forward play, or driving, fine hitters seem as if they felt the ball on the bat, and sprung it away with an elastic impulse; and, in the more forcible hits, a ball from one of the All England batsmen appears not so much like a hit as a shot from the bat: for, when a ball is hit in the swiftest part of the bat’s whirl, and with that part of the bat that gives the greatest force with the least jar, the ball appears to offer no resistance; its momentum is annihilated by the whirl of the bat, and the two-and-twenty fieldsmen find to their surprise how little ground a fieldsman can cover against true and accurate hitting.