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

CHAPTER IV

AT THE NETS

 

There are few better things in life than a public school summer term.

The winter term is good, especially towards the end, and there are

points, though not many, about the Easter term: but it is in the

summer that one really appreciates public school life. The freedom of

it, after the restrictions of even the most easy-going private school,

is intoxicating. The change is almost as great as that from public

school to ‘Varsity.

 

For Mike the path was made particularly easy. The only drawback to

going to a big school for the first time is the fact that one is made

to feel so very small and inconspicuous. New boys who have been

leading lights at their private schools feel it acutely for the first

week. At one time it was the custom, if we may believe writers of a

generation or so back, for boys to take quite an embarrassing interest

in the newcomer. He was asked a rain of questions, and was, generally,

in the very centre of the stage. Nowadays an absolute lack of interest

is the fashion. A new boy arrives, and there he is, one of a crowd.

 

Mike was saved this salutary treatment to a large extent, at first by

virtue of the greatness of his family, and, later, by his own

performances on the cricket field. His three elder brothers were

objects of veneration to most Wrykynians, and Mike got a certain

amount of reflected glory from them. The brother of first-class

cricketers has a dignity of his own. Then Bob was a help. He was on

the verge of the cricket team and had been the school full-back for

two seasons. Mike found that people came up and spoke to him, anxious

to know if he were Jackson’s brother; and became friendly when he

replied in the affirmative. Influential relations are a help in every

stage of life.

 

It was Wyatt who gave him his first chance at cricket. There were nets

on the first afternoon of term for all old colours of the three teams

and a dozen or so of those most likely to fill the vacant places.

Wyatt was there, of course. He had got his first eleven cap in the

previous season as a mighty hitter and a fair slow bowler. Mike met

him crossing the field with his cricket bag.

 

“Hullo, where are you off to?” asked Wyatt. “Coming to watch the

nets?”

 

Mike had no particular programme for the afternoon. Junior cricket had

not begun, and it was a little difficult to know how to fill in the

time.

 

“I tell you what,” said Wyatt, “nip into the house and shove on some

things, and I’ll try and get Burgess to let you have a knock later

on.”

 

This suited Mike admirably. A quarter of an hour later he was sitting

at the back of the first eleven net, watching the practice.

 

Burgess, the captain of the Wrykyn team, made no pretence of being a

bat. He was the school fast bowler and concentrated his energies on

that department of the game. He sometimes took ten minutes at the

wicket after everybody else had had an innings, but it was to bowl

that he came to the nets.

 

He was bowling now to one of the old colours whose name Mike did not

know. Wyatt and one of the professionals were the other two bowlers.

Two nets away Firby-Smith, who had changed his pince-nez for a pair of

huge spectacles, was performing rather ineffectively against some very

bad bowling. Mike fixed his attention on the first eleven man.

 

He was evidently a good bat. There was style and power in his batting.

He had a way of gliding Burgess’s fastest to leg which Mike admired

greatly. He was succeeded at the end of a quarter of an hour by

another eleven man, and then Bob appeared.

 

It was soon made evident that this was not Bob’s day. Nobody is at his

best on the first day of term; but Bob was worse than he had any right

to be. He scratched forward at nearly everything, and when Burgess,

who had been resting, took up the ball again, he had each stump

uprooted in a regular series in seven balls. Once he skied one of

Wyatt’s slows over the net behind the wicket; and Mike, jumping up,

caught him neatly.

 

“Thanks,” said Bob austerely, as Mike returned the ball to him. He

seemed depressed.

 

Towards the end of the afternoon, Wyatt went up to Burgess.

 

“Burgess,” he said, “see that kid sitting behind the net?”

 

“With the naked eye,” said Burgess. “Why?”

 

“He’s just come to Wain’s. He’s Bob Jackson’s brother, and I’ve a sort

of idea that he’s a bit of a bat. I told him I’d ask you if he could

have a knock. Why not send him in at the end net? There’s nobody there

now.”

 

Burgess’s amiability off the field equalled his ruthlessness when

bowling.

 

“All right,” he said. “Only if you think that I’m going to sweat to

bowl to him, you’re making a fatal error.”

 

“You needn’t do a thing. Just sit and watch. I rather fancy this kid’s

something special.”

 

*

 

Mike put on Wyatt’s pads and gloves, borrowed his bat, and walked

round into the net.

 

“Not in a funk, are you?” asked Wyatt, as he passed.

 

Mike grinned. The fact was that he had far too good an opinion of

himself to be nervous. An entirely modest person seldom makes a good

batsman. Batting is one of those things which demand first and

foremost a thorough belief in oneself. It need not be aggressive, but

it must be there.

 

Wyatt and the professional were the bowlers. Mike had seen enough of

Wyatt’s bowling to know that it was merely ordinary “slow tosh,” and

the professional did not look as difficult as Saunders. The first

half-dozen balls he played carefully. He was on trial, and he meant to

take no risks. Then the professional over-pitched one slightly on the

off. Mike jumped out, and got the full face of the bat on to it. The

ball hit one of the ropes of the net, and nearly broke it.

 

“How’s that?” said Wyatt, with the smile of an impresario on the first

night of a successful piece.

 

“Not bad,” admitted Burgess.

 

A few moments later he was still more complimentary. He got up and

took a ball himself.

 

Mike braced himself up as Burgess began his run. This time he was more

than a trifle nervous. The bowling he had had so far had been tame.

This would be the real ordeal.

 

As the ball left Burgess’s hand he began instinctively to shape for a

forward stroke. Then suddenly he realised that the thing was going to

be a yorker, and banged his bat down in the block just as the ball

arrived. An unpleasant sensation as of having been struck by a

thunderbolt was succeeded by a feeling of relief that he had kept the

ball out of his wicket. There are easier things in the world than

stopping a fast yorker.

 

“Well played,” said Burgess.

 

Mike felt like a successful general receiving the thanks of the

nation.

 

The fact that Burgess’s next ball knocked middle and off stumps out of

the ground saddened him somewhat; but this was the last tragedy that

occurred. He could not do much with the bowling beyond stopping it and

feeling repetitions of the thunderbolt experience, but he kept up his

end; and a short conversation which he had with Burgess at the end of

his innings was full of encouragement to one skilled in reading

between the lines.

 

“Thanks awfully,” said Mike, referring to the square manner in which

the captain had behaved in letting him bat.

 

“What school were you at before you came here?” asked Burgess.

 

“A private school in Hampshire,” said Mike. “King-Hall’s. At a place

called Emsworth.”

 

“Get much cricket there?”

 

“Yes, a good lot. One of the masters, a chap called