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"Just one solitary single. Miss Burn may I call you Dolly? Do you remember that moonlight night? On the Char? In my Canadian canoe? We two?" "'S THAT?" shrieked bowler and wicket-keeper as one man. Tom looked blankly at them. He had not gone within a mile and a half of the ball, he was certain. And yet there was the umpire with his hand raised, as if he were the Pope bestowing a blessing.
A massive youth had taken the ball at the top end, and the wicket-keeper was retiring to a more respectful distance behind the stumps. "You'll let me know when it's to be?" I whispered, but Raffles only answered, "I wonder Jack Studley didn't wait till there was more of a crust on the mud pie. That tripe's no use without a fast wicket!"
And now the new-comer has to take the last ball of the over his first. Alas and alack! The sixth ball is dead on to the middle stump. The Harrovian plays forward. Man alive, you ought to have played back at that! The ball grazes the top edge of the bat's blade and flies straight into the welcoming hands of the wicket-keeper. Two wickets for 33.
The rounds consist of three or four blows, and last about twenty seconds each, when the seconds, who have been watching behind their men in the attitude of a wicket-keeper, with their sword-points on the ground, jump in and knock up the duellists' weapons.
Hit it as hard as you please, he runs in, picks it up, and snaps it back to the wicket-keeper as easy as if he was playing pitch and toss. And, by Jove! the Demon can do it. You wait. I never saw any fellow like him. He's only just sixteen, and he'll get his Flannels. You needn't shake your old head, I know he will. And we must work like blazes to get ours next summer."
Runs came with fair regularity, but wickets fell at intervals, and when the wicket-keeper was run out at length for a lively sixty-three, the end was very near. Saunders, coming in last, hit two boundaries, and was then caught by Mike. His second hit had just lifted the M.C.C. total over the three hundred.
Cricket is a capital game: it looks well to see light, active figures chasing the ball when the batsman has thrown all his power into the leg hit, and sent the ball bounding and skimming far away beyond the farther fielder; then backwards and forwards run the men at the wickets, while the onlookers cheer and shout at the bowler's prowess, as he stops the thrown-up ball, and hurls it at the wicket-keeper, who, with apparently one motion for catching and knocking off the bailes, puts the hard hitter out.
When I was young we always had another fielder, called the long- stop, who stood behind the wicket-keeper. I used to be a thick, solid boy, so they put me as long-stop, and the balls used to bounce off me, I remember, as if I had been a mattress." Delighted laughter. "But after Blackham came wicket-keepers had to learn that they were there to stop the ball.
There were only two wickets, a foot high and two feet apart, with one long bail at the top. Between the wickets there was a hole large enough to contain the ball, and when the batsman made a run, he had to place the end of his bat in this hole before the wicket-keeper could place the ball there, otherwise he would be "run out."
'It's all in the game; and the best side in the world sometimes has an off day! But, if, after a great struggle, you lose by a run, you go home thinking uncharitable thoughts of the bowler who might have prevented the other fellow from making a certain boundary hit, of the wicket-keeper who might have saved a bye, or of the batsman who might easily have got a few more runs if he hadn't played such a ridiculously fluky stroke.
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