How exacting is the critic in this matter of fielding! and how delightfully simple the bowling looks from that admirably safe vantage-ground, the pavilion!  Just as to a man comfortably stationed in the grand-stand at Aintree nothing looks easier than the way in which the best horses in the world flit over the five-foot fences, leaving them behind with scarcely an effort, their riders sitting quietly in the saddle all the while, so does the pavilion critic pride himself on the way he would have “cut” that short one instead of merely stopping it, or blocked that simple ball that went straight on and bowled the wicket.  Everything that is well and gracefully performed appears easy to the looker-on.  But that ease and grace, whether in the racehorse or in the man, has only been acquired by months and years of training and practice.

It is seldom that the spectator is able to form a true and unbiassed opinion as to the varied contingencies which lead to victory or defeat in cricket.  The actual players and the umpires are perhaps alone qualified to judge to what extent the fluctuations of the game are affected by the vagaries of weather and ground.  For this reason it is well to take newspaper criticism cum grano salis.

What is the cause of the extraordinary fluctuations of form which all cricketers, from the greatest to the least, are more or less subject to?  It cannot be set down altogether to luck, for a run of bad luck, such as all men have at times experienced, is often compatible with being in the very best form.  A man who is playing very well at the net often gets out directly he goes in to bat in a match, whilst many a good player, who tells you “he has not had a bat in his hand this season,” in his very first innings for the year makes a big score.  In subsequent innings’s, oddly enough, he feels the want of net practice. Confidence would seem to be the sine qua non for the successful batsman.  Nothing succeeds like success; and once fairly started on a sequence of big scores, the cricketer goes on day by day piling up runs and vires acquirit eundo.

Perhaps “being in form” does not depend so much on the state of the digestion as on the state of the mind.  Anxiety or excitement, fostered by over-keenness, usually results in a blank score-sheet.  Some men, like horses, are totally unable to do themselves credit on great occasions.  They go off their feed, and are utterly out of sorts in consequence.  On the other hand, sheer force of will has often enabled men to make a big score.  Many a good batsman can recall occasions on which he made a mental resolve on the morning of a match to make a century, and did it.

How curious it is that really good players, from staleness or some unknown cause, occasionally become absolutely useless for a time!  Every fresh failure seems to bring more and more nervousness, until, from sheer lack of confidence, their case becomes hopeless, and a child could bowl them out.  Ah well! we must not grumble at the ups and downs of the finest game in creation:  “every dog will have his day” sooner or later; of that we may be sure.