Mike - Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (the reading strategies book TXT) 📗

CHAPTER XIII

THE M.C.C. MATCH

 

If the day happens to be fine, there is a curious, dream-like

atmosphere about the opening stages of a first eleven match.

Everything seems hushed and expectant. The rest of the school have

gone in after the interval at eleven o’clock, and you are alone on the

grounds with a cricket-bag. The only signs of life are a few

pedestrians on the road beyond the railings and one or two blazer and

flannel-clad forms in the pavilion. The sense of isolation is trying

to the nerves, and a school team usually bats 25 per cent. better

after lunch, when the strangeness has worn off.

 

Mike walked across from Wain’s, where he had changed, feeling quite

hollow. He could almost have cried with pure fright. Bob had shouted

after him from a window as he passed Donaldson’s, to wait, so that

they could walk over together; but conversation was the last thing

Mike desired at that moment.

 

He had almost reached the pavilion when one of the M.C.C. team came

down the steps, saw him, and stopped dead.

 

“By Jove, Saunders!” cried Mike.

 

“Why, Master Mike!”

 

The professional beamed, and quite suddenly, the lost, hopeless

feeling left Mike. He felt as cheerful as if he and Saunders had met

in the meadow at home, and were just going to begin a little quiet

net-practice.

 

“Why, Master Mike, you don’t mean to say you’re playing for the school

already?”

 

Mike nodded happily.

 

“Isn’t it ripping,” he said.

 

Saunders slapped his leg in a sort of ecstasy.

 

“Didn’t I always say it, sir,” he chuckled. “Wasn’t I right? I used to

say to myself it ‘ud be a pretty good school team that ‘ud leave you

out.”

 

“Of course, I’m only playing as a sub., you know. Three chaps are in

extra, and I got one of the places.”

 

“Well, you’ll make a hundred to-day, Master Mike, and then they’ll

have to put you in.”

 

“Wish I could!”

 

“Master Joe’s come down with the Club,” said Saunders.

 

“Joe! Has he really? How ripping! Hullo, here he is. Hullo, Joe?”

 

The greatest of all the Jacksons was descending the pavilion steps

with the gravity befitting an All England batsman. He stopped short,

as Saunders had done.

 

“Mike! You aren’t playing!”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Well, I’m hanged! Young marvel, isn’t he, Saunders?”

 

“He is, sir,” said Saunders. “Got all the strokes. I always said it,

Master Joe. Only wants the strength.”

 

Joe took Mike by the shoulder, and walked him off in the direction of

a man in a Zingari blazer who was bowling slows to another of the

M.C.C. team. Mike recognised him with awe as one of the three best

amateur wicket-keepers in the country.

 

“What do you think of this?” said Joe, exhibiting Mike, who grinned

bashfully. “Aged ten last birthday, and playing for the school. You

are only ten, aren’t you, Mike?”

 

“Brother of yours?” asked the wicket-keeper.

 

“Probably too proud to own the relationship, but he is.”

 

“Isn’t there any end to you Jacksons?” demanded the wicket-keeper in

an aggrieved tone. “I never saw such a family.”

 

“This is our star. You wait till he gets at us to-day. Saunders is our

only bowler, and Mike’s been brought up on Saunders. You’d better win

the toss if you want a chance of getting a knock and lifting your

average out of the minuses.”

 

“I have won the toss,” said the other with dignity. “Do you

think I don’t know the elementary duties of a captain?”

 

*

 

The school went out to field with mixed feelings. The wicket was hard

and true, which would have made it pleasant to be going in first. On

the other hand, they would feel decidedly better and fitter for

centuries after the game had been in progress an hour or so. Burgess

was glad as a private individual, sorry as a captain. For himself, the

sooner he got hold of the ball and began to bowl the better he liked

it. As a captain, he realised that a side with Joe Jackson on it, not

to mention the other first-class men, was not a side to which he would

have preferred to give away an advantage. Mike was feeling that by no

possibility could he hold the simplest catch, and hoping that nothing

would come his way. Bob, conscious of being an uncertain field, was

feeling just the same.

 

The M.C.C. opened with Joe and a man in an Oxford Authentic cap. The

beginning of the game was quiet. Burgess’s yorker was nearly too much

for the latter in the first over, but he contrived to chop it away,

and the pair gradually settled down. At twenty, Joe began to open his

shoulders. Twenty became forty with disturbing swiftness, and Burgess

tried a change of bowling.

 

It seemed for one instant as if the move had been a success, for Joe,

still taking risks, tried to late-cut a rising ball, and snicked

it straight into Bob’s hands at second slip. It was the easiest

of slip-catches, but Bob fumbled it, dropped it, almost held it a

second time, and finally let it fall miserably to the ground. It was

a moment too painful for words. He rolled the ball back to the bowler

in silence.

 

One of those weary periods followed when the batsman’s defence seems

to the fieldsmen absolutely impregnable. There was a sickening

inevitableness in the way in which every ball was played with the very

centre of the bat. And, as usual, just when things seemed most

hopeless, relief came. The Authentic, getting in front of his wicket,

to pull one of the simplest long-hops ever seen on a cricket field,

missed it, and was l.b.w. And the next ball upset the newcomer’s leg

stump.

 

The school revived. Bowlers and field were infused with a new life.

Another wicket—two stumps knocked out of the ground by Burgess—helped

the thing on. 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. Four after four, all

round the wicket, with never a chance or a mishit to vary the

monotony. Two hundred went up, and two hundred and fifty. Then Joe

reached his century, and was stumped next ball. Then came lunch.

 

The rest of the innings was like the gentle rain after the

thunderstorm. 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.

 

*

 

Three hundred is a score that takes some making on any ground, but on

a fine day it was not an unusual total for the Wrykyn eleven. Some

years before, against Ripton, they had run up four hundred and

sixteen; and only last season had massacred a very weak team of Old

Wrykynians with a score that only just missed the fourth hundred.

 

Unfortunately, on the present occasion, there was scarcely time,

unless the bowling happened to get completely collared, to make the

runs. It was a quarter to four when the innings began, and stumps were

to be drawn at a quarter to seven. A hundred an hour is quick work.

 

Burgess, however, was optimistic, as usual. “Better have a go for

them,” he said to Berridge and Marsh, the school first pair.

 

Following out this courageous advice, Berridge, after hitting three

boundaries in his first two overs, was stumped half-way through the

third.

 

After this, things settled down. Morris, the first-wicket man, was a

thoroughly sound bat, a little on the slow side, but exceedingly hard

to shift. He and Marsh proceeded to play themselves in, until it

looked as if they were likely to stay till the drawing of stumps.

 

A comfortable, rather somnolent feeling settled upon the school. A

long stand at cricket is a soothing sight to watch. There was an

absence of hurry about the batsmen which harmonised well with the

drowsy summer afternoon. And yet runs were coming at a fair pace. The

hundred went up at five o’clock, the hundred and fifty at half-past.

Both batsmen were completely at home, and the M.C.C. third-change

bowlers had been put on.

 

Then the great wicket-keeper took off the pads and gloves, and the

fieldsmen retired to posts at the extreme edge of the ground.

 

“Lobs,” said Burgess. “By Jove, I wish I was in.”

 

It seemed to be the general opinion among the members of the Wrykyn

eleven on the pavilion balcony that Morris and Marsh were in luck. The

team did not grudge them their good fortune, because they had earned

it; but they were distinctly envious.

 

Lobs are the most dangerous, insinuating things in the world.

Everybody knows in theory the right way to treat them. Everybody knows

that the man who is content not to try to score more than a single

cannot get out to them. Yet nearly everybody does get out to them.

 

It was the same story to-day. The first over yielded six runs, all

through gentle taps along the ground. In the second, Marsh hit an

over-pitched one along the ground to the terrace bank. The next ball

he swept round to the leg boundary. And that was the end of Marsh. He

saw himself scoring at the rate of twenty-four an over. Off the last

ball he was stumped by several feet, having done himself credit by

scoring seventy.

 

The long stand was followed, as usual, by a series of disasters.

Marsh’s wicket had fallen at a hundred and eighty. Ellerby left at a

hundred and eighty-six. By the time the scoring-board registered two

hundred, five wickets were down, three of them victims to the lobs.

Morris was still in at one end. He had refused to be tempted. He was

jogging on steadily to his century.

 

Bob Jackson went in next, with instructions to keep his eye on the

lob-man.

 

For a time things went well. Saunders, who had gone on to bowl again

after a rest, seemed to give Morris no trouble, and Bob put him

through the slips with apparent ease. Twenty runs were added, when the

lob-bowler once more got in his deadly work. Bob, letting alone a ball

wide of the off-stump under the impression that it was going to break

away, was disagreeably surprised to find it break in instead, and hit

the wicket. The bowler smiled sadly, as if he hated to have to do

these things.

 

Mike’s heart jumped as he saw the bails go. It was