Excerpt from Cricket Guide: How to Bat, How to Bowl, How to Field, Diagrams How to Place a Field, Valuable Hints to Players, and Other Valuable Information; Rules of the Game From twenty minutes to a half hour's practice at the wicket, three or four times a week, on a well rolled and level piece of turf, from a medium pace-bowler, with instructions from a professional (or someone well posted on the game) as to when and how to make the different hits or plays, is the best advice to a beginner. It is of more value to obtain practice of this kind than any amount of book study. Yet it is necessary to examine into the art of the game to get at the foundation and to become acquainted with the different attitudes and names of the many hits or strokes.