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"Why, we have conceit enough, sir, to think that we might make at least a half-way battery," smiled Dick. "Battery, eh?" repeated Lieutenant Lawrence. "Good enough! Get out and do it. Durville, you're one of the real batsmen. Run out there to the home plate, and see whether Prescott and Holmes can put anything past you." How good it felt to be in field clothes again!
Mike reached his century just as Psmith and his father took their seats. A square cut off the slow bowler was just too wide for point to get to. By the time third man had sprinted across and returned the ball the batsmen had run two. Mr Smith was enthusiastic. 'I tell you, he said to Psmith, who was clapping in a gently encouraging manner, 'the boy's a wonderful bat.
When our batsmen had got to the wickets it seemed as if the game would never begin, for Lambert took guard three times and looked round the ground so often to see where the fielders were placed that two or three of the Burtington men from sheer weariness began to turn somersaults.
"Please don't fellows," begged Dick, going almost white under the torment, after three or four boys had succeeded in pumping that arm. "You've no idea how sore my arm is." "It must be," shouted Greg. "Dick told me to kill his arm, if I had to, but to signal for the balls that would strike out three batsmen in lightning order." "The left hand, then!" clamored more of Dick's admirers.
His proper sphere of action was the tail. If the first pair of bowlers could dismiss five good batsmen, Lorimer's fast, straight deliveries usually accounted for the rest. But there had to be somebody to pave the way for him. He was essentially a change bowler.
A game of fives or a physical drill class need not demand more than an hour. The game that really wastes time and I am sorry to admit it is cricket. I am not thinking so much of the long waits in the pavilion when two batsmen on a side are well set, and the rest have nothing to do but to applaud.
"I'm just in feather!" smiled Dick. Greg, too, had been a bit anxious; but when the first ball over the plate stung his one unmitted hand, Holmes concluded that Prescott did not need to be helped out of the box just at that time. Then followed something which came so fast that the spectators all but rubbed their eyes. One after another Dick Prescott struck out three Navy batsmen.
Stone and Robinson themselves, that swash-buckling pair, who now treated Mike and Psmith with cold but consistent politeness, were both fair batsmen, and Stone was a good slow bowler. There were other exponents of the game, mostly in Downing's house. Altogether, quite worthy colleagues even for a man who had been a star at Wrykyn. One solitary overture Mike made during that first fortnight.
The batsmen took it for granted that it was a boundary hit, and were changing ends when, one man being out of his ground, the wicket was put down, the wicket-keeper not recognizing that the ball was "dead." The umpire gave the man "out." The man demurred, and immediately shouts arose on all sides: "Out!" "Not out!" "Out!" "Not out!" "Out!"
In his second over the Doctor bowled a shade straighter, and began knocking the batsmen about, and hurting them and frightening them.
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