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When the bell rang for the end of morning school, five wickets were down for a hundred and thirteen. But from the end of school till lunch things went very wrong indeed. Joe was still in at one end, invincible; and at the other was the great wicket-keeper. And the pair of them suddenly began to force the pace till the bowling was in a tangled knot.
The moment had come, the moment which he had experienced only in dreams. And in the dreams he was always full of confidence, and invariably hit a boundary. Sometimes a drive, sometimes a cut, but always a boundary. "To leg, sir," said the umpire. "Don't be in a funk," said a voice. "Play straight, and you can't get out." It was Joe, who had taken the gloves when the wicket-keeper went on to bowl.
"This is just the sort of time when he might have come off." "Bob's broken his egg," said Mike. "Good man. Every little helps.... Oh, you silly ass, get back!" Berridge had called Bob for a short run that was obviously no run. Third man was returning the ball as the batsmen crossed. The next moment the wicket-keeper had the bails off. Berridge was out by a yard.
Mike watched Ashe shape with a sinking heart. The wicket-keeper looked like a man who feels that his hour has come. Mike could see him licking his lips. There was nervousness written all over him. He was not kept long in suspense. De Freece's first ball made a hideous wreck of his wicket. "Over," said the umpire. Mike felt that the school's one chance now lay in his keeping the bowling.
"You know I think Meredith goes a bit too far at times," came a voice from the middle of the room. Bradford rose at once. "What the hell do you mean? Meredith go too far? Why, he is a splendid wicket-keeper, and far and away the finest half-back in the school. You must allow a good deal to a blood like him."
The wicket-keeper jumped out of the way, as his mother would have wished him to do, and Long-stop shut his eyes and hoped for the best. The batsman blindly waved his bat, and, inasmuch as the ball hit it, and rebounded some distance, called to his partner, who was mending the binding on his bat-handle. "Will you come? Osborne, you fool! Yes. Yes. YES! No, no. YE-E-ES! No go back, you fool.
Item, Crawley had mastered the left-handed bowler's favourite ball, and by playing very forward hit it away before it took the dangerous twist. It looked very risky, and the Hillsborough wicket-keeper was in constant hope of stumping him, but he never missed, and scored off every ball of that sort which came to him.
To Slegge's annoyance, he very soon found that if the prestige of the school was to be kept up Glyn and Singh must be in the eleven, for the former in a very short time was acknowledged to be the sharpest bowler in the school, while, from long practice together, Singh was an admirable wicket-keeper one who laughed at gloves and pads, was utterly without fear, and had, as Wrench said he being a great admirer of a game in which he never had a chance to play "a nye like a nork."
Mr Smith, who always went in last for his side, and who so far had not received a single ball during the week, was down the pavilion steps and half-way to the wicket before the retiring batsman had taken half a dozen steps. 'Last over, said the wicket-keeper to Mike. 'Any idea how many you've got? You must be near your century, I should think. 'Ninety-eight, said Mike.
All right, come. No-no-no. O, Osborne, why didn't you run that? It was an easy one." "Silly ass, Osborne," roared Cover-point, quite gratuitously, for no one had addressed him for the last twenty minutes. The batsman ran wildly out to the next ball and missed it. The wicket-keeper successfully stumped him. It was a clear case of "out," and a shout went up: "How's that?"
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