The Draw is the spontaneous result of straight play about the two leg stumps: for if you begin, as in _fig. 1._, with point of bat thrown back true to middle stump, you cannot bring the bat straight to meet a leg-stump ball without the line of the bat and the line of the ball forming an angle in crossing each other; and, by keeping your wrists well back, and giving a clear space between body and wicket, the Draw will follow of itself. [Illustration: _Fig. 2._] The bat must not be purposely presented edgeways in the least degree. Draw a full bat from the line of the middle stump to meet a leg-stump ball, and, as the line of the ball must make a very acute angle, you will have the benefit of a hit without lessening your defence. “A Draw is very dangerous with a ball that would hit the leg stump,” some say; but only when attempted in the wrong way; for, how can a full bat increase your danger? This mode of play will also lead to, what is most valuable but most rare, a correct habit of passing every ball the least to the Near side of middle stump clear away to the On side. This blocking between legs and wickets, first, obviates the ball going off legs into wicket; secondly, it keeps many awkward balls out of Slip’s hands; and, thirdly, it makes single runs off the best balls. Too little, now-a-days, is done with the Draw; too much is attempted by the “blind swipe,” to the loss of many wickets. Every man in a first-rate match who loses his wicket, while swiping round, ought to pay a forfeit to the Reward Fund. The only balls for the Draw are those which threaten the wicket. To shuffle backwards half a yard, scraping the bat on the ground, or to let the ball pass one side the body with a blind swing on the other, are hits which to mention is to reprove. Our good friend, Mr. Abraham Bass,--and what cricketer in the Midland Counties defers not to his judgment?--thinks that the Draw cannot be made quite so much of as we say, except by a left-handed man. The short-pitched balls which some draw, he thinks, are best played back to middle On, by a turn of the left arm to the On side. Here Mr. Bass mentions a very good hit--a good variety--and one, too, little practised: his hit and the Draw are each good in their respective places. To discriminate every shade is impossible. “Mr. Taylor had most hits I ever saw,” said Caldecourt, “and was a better player even than Lord Frederick; though Mr. Taylor’s hits were not all _legitimate_:” so much the better; new combinations of old hits. As to the old-fashioned hit under leg, Mr. Mynn, at Leicester, in 1836, gave great effect to one variety of it; a hit which Pilch makes useful, though hard to make elegant. Some say, with Caldecourt, such balls ought always to be drawn: but is it not a useful variety?