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What are the main essentials of wicket-keeping? Really, There are two - an ability to sight the ball early and then to catch it, whether it comes from delivery, a hit, or a throw-in.
Alan Knott
Book: Stumpers' View
Charisma seems to be a limited asset to a captain.
Mike Brearley
Book: The Art of Captaincy
All cricketers are cricketers, nonetheless so for not being 'first-class, which is no more than a statistical distinction.
John Arlott
Test Cricket is not a light-hearted business, especially that between England and Australia.
Sir Donald Bradman
Collectively and individually fielding is largely a matter of thoughts and discipline.
I. A. R. Peebles
Frequently the assertion is made that wicket keepers are born and not made. Yet anyone with average ball sense can make a fair job of it if he is prepared to work hard.
Alan Knott
Book: Stumpers' View
Every cricketer knows that in the early stages of a batsman's innings i.e. before he gets his eye in -- luck plays an important part.
W.G. Grace
A true batsman should in most of his strokes tell the truth about himself.
Sir Neville Cardus
The great thing in hitting is, not to be half-hearted about it; but when you make up your mind to hit, to do it as if the whole match depended upon that particular stroke.
W. G. Grace
No professional drunkard has ever made a great professional cricketer, nor ever will.
Quid
Book: Jerks in from Short Leg
Don't practice on the opponent's ground before the match begins. This can only give them confidence.
Sir J. M. Barrie
Book: Allahakbarries C.C
Coaching which is good, simply sharpens up a player, as wide travel and experience will.
A.E. Knight
Book: The Complete Cricketer
Coaching is often very necessary, but great care must be taken not to curb a young player's natural shots, which are often his chief scoring strokes.
Leslie Ames
Book: Close of Play
I should like to say that good batsman are born, not made; but my long experience comes up before me, and tells me that it is not so.
W.G. Grace
Book: Cricket
In the game of cricket, it has always been customary to accord more adulation to batsmen than to bowlers.
I.A.R. Peebles
Book: Talking of Cricket
Of the many facets presented by the game of cricket, most men will agree that batting is the one most distinctly enjoyable and instinctively delightful.
A.E. Knight
Book: The Complete Cricketer
It is as well for us to remember when we are watching the best batsmen that, however easy it may all look, they do not achieve their success without toil and sweat, and that there are times even with the greatest when they must seem to themselves, as we humble performers so frequently seem to ourselves, to be batting with a broomstick, with a barn door for a wicket.
E.W. Swanton
Book: Denis Compton: A Cricket Sketch
Cricket is a most precarious profession; it is called a team game but, in fact, no one is so lonely as a batsman facing a bowler supported by ten fieldsmen and observed by two umpires to ensure that his error does not go unpunished.
John Arlott
Book: An Eye for Cricket
A run is more difficult to make than no save because batting is in its nature a far less certain and reliable thing than bowling and fielding.
K.S. Rangitsinhji
Book: The Jubilee Book of Cricket
I do not believe so implicitly, as some cricketers and writers upon cricket do, in watching the bowler's hand. I prefer to watch the ball, and not anticipate events.
W.G. Grace
I feel loosening exercises are a tremendous help to me in making diving catches, especially the stretching ones for my shoulders and arms.
Alan Knott
Book: Stumper's View
It is impossible for forward play to be quite as safe as back play because there must be a moment when the ball is out of sight.
K.S. Ranjitsinhji
Any fool can play forward, but it is only the good player who can score off forceful backstrokes.
A.C. Maclaren
Book: The Young Batsman in The Cricketer
The hardest tests batting are played fast bowling on a fiery wicket and spin bowling on a sticky one.
Sir Pelham Warner
A missed chance must not be allowed to affect your performance. Once it has gone nothing can be done about it. Despondency can be transmitted to the rest of the side and your 'keeping could be below par for the rest of the innings. So if you make an error, pick the ball up quickly and return it to the bowler or close fielder as though nothing had happened.
Alat Knott
Book: Stumper's View
A batsman who cannot make runs on the turf after rain and sun and sind is only half a batsman.
E.H.D. Sewell
Book: Well Hit Sir
Cricket, however, has more in it than mere efficiency. There is something called the spirit of cricket, which cannot be defined.
Lord Tennyson
Book: Sticky Wickets
Cricket has got to have the courage of its own aristocracy.
Dudley Carew
Book: To The Wicket
Reading poetry and watching cricket was the sum of my world, and the two are not so far apart as many aesthetes might believe.
Don Bradman
Sachin Tendulkar is the hardest batsman I've ever had to bowl to because he judges the length a lot quicker than anyone else.
Shane Warne
During my 21 years of play cricket, I have never been approached by anyone or being offered a bribe.
Imran Khan
Cricket is a pressure game, and when it comes to the India-Pakistan match the pressure is doubled.
Imran Khan
I bowl my best when I am the fittest and the best way to get fit is to bowl. That's how you get your rhythm. You cannot really find a rhythm by bowling in the nets.
Brett Lee
Soccer and cricket were my main sports growing up. I have trials as a soccer player ... but it was cricket that became my chosen profession.
Ian Botham
Cricket was my reason for living.
Herald Larwood
The cricket player is not an actor on a stage, merely a personality to be lost in the creation of the poet's brain or a playwright's mind, he is himself the poet and the playwright.
A.E. Knight
Book: The Complete Cricketer
A cricketer's life is a life of splendid freedom, healthy effort, endless variety, and delightful good fellowship.
W.G. Grace
It always surprises me that some people think a world cricketer should give 100 percent of his effort and concentration every minute he is playing cricket, and then not relax and enjoy himself after. They seem to have strange ideas about how curfews and conferences and controls should fill his time between play. But if a cricketer does not learn early in his life which things do him good and which are bad for his cricket, and for him, then he does not belong in a world-class team.
Sir Garfield Sobers
It does not always follow that a player's behavior on the field is a true index of his character off it.
Alan Gibson
It is not altogether an advantage when a side becomes heavily dependent on one man, however gifted. If he succeeds, he inspires his fellows beyond their normal abilities; but if he fails, he is apt to depress them far below what they can really do.
Alan Gibson
Figures are not entirely conclusive especially short-term figures, but it is difficult to avoid their significance if a man produces them year after year against every type of opponent and under all conceivable conditions.
Sir Donald Bradman
Book: Farewell to Cricket
I have known cricketers who stood head and shoulder above everyone else at net practice but rarely were able to do themselves justice in a match. Their mental approach to the game was unequal to their natural physical talents.
Sir Leonard Hutton
Book: Just My Story
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