Batting (cricket) square cut. The difference between the cut and the square drive is the height of the ball at contact: the cut is played to a ball bouncing waist high or above with the batsman standing tall, whereas the square drive is played to a wide ball of shin height with the batsman bending his knees and crouching low to make contact. A pull is a cross-batted shot played to a ball bouncing around waist height by swinging the bat in a horizontal arc in front of the body, "pulling" it around to the leg side towards mid-wicket or square leg.
History of cricket to 1725 Although single wicket was in vogue through the period of this history, the earliest "definite" record of a single wicket match is in 1726, so it is out of scope in this article. In early cricket, there were two umpires as now, but the modern square-leg umpire stood close to the striker's wicket. Both umpires carried a bat which the running batsman was required to touch in order to complete his run. There were two scorers who sat on the field and recorded the scores by making notches on tallysticks; runs were then known as notches for this reason. On