A man has been properly given out by stopping a ball with his arm below
the elbow. Also a short man, who stooped to let the ball pass over his
head, and was hit in the face, was once given out, as before wicket.
“From it;” that is, the ball must pitch in a line, not from the hand,
but from wicket to wicket.
Much has been said on the Leg-before-Wicket law.
Clarke and others say that a round-arm bowler can rarely hit the wicket
at all with a ball not over-pitched, unless it pitch out of the line
of the wickets. If this is true, a ball that has been pitched straight
“would _not_ have hit it;” and a ball that “would have hit it,” could
not have been “pitched straight;” and therefore, it is argued the
condition “in a straight line from it (the wicket)” should be altered
to “in a straight line from the bowler’s hand.”
And what do we say?
Bring the question to an issue thus: stretch a thin white string from
the leg-stump of the striker’s wicket to the off-stump of the bowler’s
wicket; and let any round-armed bowler (who does not bowl “over the
wicket”) try whether good length balls, which do not pitch outside
of the said string, will hit the wicket regularly, that is, of their
common tendency and not as “a break.”
My firm belief is, that this experiment (with a bowler and a
string) will convince any one that the two conditions of being out
leg-before-wicket (“straight pitch,” and “would have hit”) cannot,
except by accident, be fulfilled by an ordinary round-armed bowler; and
if so, the law of leg-before-wicket should require that the ball pitch
straight not from the bowler’s wicket, but straight from the bowler’s
hand.
_Objection._ “This would make the umpire’s task too difficult: you
would thus make him guess what was straight from the hand, but he can
actually see what is straight from the wicket.”
_Answer._ This difficulty is an imaginary one. An umpire must be blind
indeed, not to discern when the ball keeps its natural line from the
hand to the wicket, and when it pitches out of that line, and then
abruptly turns into it. Besides, as the law now stands, the umpire has
the same difficulty and the same discretion, for how can he decide the
condition, “would have hit,” without making allowance for the wide arm,
and the “working” of the ball, and bringing the said objectionable
_guessing_ into requisition? The judgment now proposed for the umpire,
is no difficulty at all, but the judgment he has already to exercise is
a great difficulty indeed. How often is a batsman convinced, that the
ball that hit him before wicket was making so abrupt a turn, that it
must have missed the wicket, and, but for that abrupt turn, would never
have hit him at all. I do not believe that of the men given out “leg
before wicket,” one in three are deservedly out. But, often do we see a
wicket saved by the leg and pads, when both the skill of the bowler and
the blunder of the batsman deserved falling stumps.
With these observations, I must leave my friends to the free
exercise of their heads and hands, feet and faculties, patience and
perseverance, holding myself up to them as an example in one respect
only, that I am not too old to learn, and will thankfully receive any
contribution, whether from pen or pencil, that is calculated to enrich
or to illustrate a work, which, I am but too happy to acknowledge, the
community of cricketers have adopted as their own.
LONDON:
A. and G. A. SPOTTISWOODE,
New-street-Square.