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Updated: May 22, 2025
One had not to be a cricketer oneself to appreciate his perfect command of pitch and break, his beautifully easy action, which never varied with the varying pace, his great ball on the leg-stump his dropping head-ball in a word, the infinite ingenuity of that versatile attack.
Whether Burgess would have knocked de Freece off his length or not was a question that was destined to remain unsolved, for in the middle of the other bowler's over Bob hit a single; the batsmen crossed; and Burgess had his leg-stump uprooted while trying a gigantic pull-stroke. The melancholy youth put up the figures, 54, 5, 12, on the board.
The new man, the eleventh-hour bowler, was measuring himself with Radley. I realised that my first ball teased him. My second laid his leg-stump on the ground. A yell of joy showed to what a height the spirits of the crowd had risen. But mine sank in proportion: I should never bowl him out twice in one day.... The bell rang, and the field was cleared.
Pringle thanked him for his information, and went back to the stable-yard, where he lost the fourth test match by sixteen runs, owing to preoccupation. You can't play a yorker on the leg-stump with a thin walking-stick if your mind is occupied elsewhere. One ought never, thought Pringle, to despise the gifts which Fortune bestows on us.
It was beginning to look as if this might go on for ever, when Ellerby, who had been missing the stumps by fractions of an inch, for the last ten minutes, did what Burgess had failed to do. He bowled a straight, medium-paced yorker, and de Freece, swiping at it with a bright smile, found his leg-stump knocked back. He had made twenty-eight.
The ball hit his right pad. "'S that?" shouted mid-on. Mid-on has a habit of appealing for l.-b.-w. in school matches. De Freece said nothing. The Ripton bowler was as conscientious in the matter of appeals as a good bowler should be. He had seen that the ball had pitched off the leg-stump. The umpire shook his head. Mid-on tried to look as if he had not spoken.
He sent in the balls at such a pace that they came on the wicket like battering-rams, and their twist was so great that they would pitch about a mile off and appear to be wides, when all of a sudden they would spin in on a treacherous curve, right on to a fellow's leg-stump. John Hardy stood them well enough, blocking away with a calm sense of duty, and never attempting to strike one.
Throwing all caution and the captain's commands to the winds, I did "let out with a vengeance," as Tom Atkins said on my return to the tent, for I "let in" the ball, which, coming in with a swish, snapped my leg-stump in two, sending the pieces flying sky high in the air!
So evening after evening I bowled to Radley, who coached me enthusiastically. I think that he was making a fascinating hobby of training his favourite pupil for the Team, much as an owner delights in running a favourite horse for the Derby. And, when one evening I uprooted his leg-stump twice in succession, he said: "Good. Now we shall see what we shall see."
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