People do not play the game well enough to enjoy it as much as they enjoy their other games and exercises--or their laziness and “amusements.” And behind this low standard of play (and hence of enjoyment) is the fact that they have not yet mastered and appropriated the alphabet of Cricket.
I have never yet heard of anyone who systematically divided Cricket strokes into a number of parts, persevered in assimilating each part, combined and co-ordinated the parts; and then, even then, looked out for faults to be corrected by a similar process. I have scarcely ever read or heard of a sensible analysis of any Cricket stroke, except by a few such writers as Mr. C. B. Fry (for we must put on one side the nonsense that the late cut is done only with the wrist: that is not analysis but bad guess-work). And this, too, although any stroke _can_ be analysed.
I will go further. I have never yet read or heard of the following advice (let the reader tell me if it has ever been given): that, if a beginner must or will do the full stroke at once, he should concentrate on each part of it in turn, now on the left foot again and again, now on the left elbow, and so on; somewhat as--to repeat a comparison--the conductor might during rehearsals concentrate his attention on each instrument in turn, now on the first violin, now on the ’cello, and so on. The end and aim would be a perfect whole; but each part must first be perfected if ever a complete harmony is to result.
Now why should there not be at every decent school, if not in every decent home, a drill for games? A few foundation-movements were suggested in the “Training of the Body” (Appendix II.). I remember a deadly dull drill of monotonous rhythmical both-sides-together exercises at two private schools; the compulsory drill for first-year-students at Yale College in America was better, but still far from fascinating. Why was there no swift lunge for the left foot in a straight line; no throwing in all directions with each hand in turn; no wrist-turning (as suggested in “Daily Training”); no starting out and then back and then sideways; no running similarly? In a word, why was there no drill at all in view of those games and sports in which every single British boy I have ever met would love to be able to excel; why was there no sort or kind of apprenticeship for Cricket or other athletics? The drill was not even healthy--did not make us lively and fresh. It was the acme of dreary discipline.