Mike at Wrykyn (22 page)

This had occurred to Mike
independently. The Ripton match was a special event, and the man who performed
any outstanding feat against that school was treated as a sort of Horatius.
Honours were heaped upon him. If he could only make a century! Or even fifty.
Even twenty, if it got the school out of a tight place. He was as nervous on
the Saturday morning as he had been on the morning of the M.C.C. match. It was
Victory or Westminster Abbey now. To do only averagely well, to be among the
ruck, would be as useless as not playing at all, as far as his chance of his
first was concerned.

It was
evident to those who woke early on the Saturday morning that this Ripton match
was not likely to end in a draw. During the Friday rain had fallen almost
incessantly in a steady drizzle. It had stopped late at night; and at six in
the morning there was every prospect of another hot day. There was that feeling
in the air which shows that the sun is trying to get through the clouds. The
sky was a dull grey at breakfast-time, except where a flush of deeper colour
gave a hint of the sun. It was a day on which to win the toss, and go in first.
At eleven-thirty, when the match was timed to begin, the wicket would be too
wet to be difficult. Runs would come easily till the sun came out and began to
dry the ground. When that happened there would be trouble for the side that was
batting.

Burgess,
inspecting the wicket with Mr. Spence during the quarter to eleven interval,
was not slow to recognize this fact.

“I
should win the toss today, if I were you, Burgess,” said Mr. Spence.

“Just
what I was thinking, sir.”

“That
wicket’s going to get nasty after lunch, if the sun comes out. A regular Laker
wicket it’s going to be.”

“I wish
we
had
Laker,” said Burgess. “Or even Wyatt. It would just suit him,
this.”

Mr.
Spence, as a member of the staff, was not going to be drawn into discussing
Wyatt and his premature departure, so he diverted the conversation on to the
subject of the general aspect of the school’s attack.

“Who
will go on first with you, Burgess?”

“Who do
you think, sir? Ellerby? It might be his wicket.”

Ellerby
bowled medium inclining to slow. On a pitch that suited him he was apt to turn
from leg and get people out caught at the wicket or short slip.

“Certainly,
Ellerby. This end, I think. The other’s yours, though I’m afraid you’ll have a
poor time bowling fast today. Even with plenty of sawdust I doubt if it will be
possible to get a decent foothold till after lunch.”

“I must
win the toss,” said Burgess. “It’s a nuisance too, about our batting. Marsh
will probably be dead out of form after being in the Infirmary so long. If he’d
had a chance of getting a bit of practice yesterday, it might have been all
right.”

“That rain
will have a lot to answer for if we lose. On a dry, hard wicket I’m certain we
should beat them four times out of six. I was talking to a man who played
against them for the Nomads. He said that on a true wicket there was not a
great deal of sting in their bowling, but that they’ve got a slow leg-break man
who might be dangerous on a day like this. A boy called de Freece. I don’t know
of him. He wasn’t in the team last year.”

“I know
the chap. He played wing-three for them at rugger against us this year on their
ground. He was crocked when they came here. He’s a pretty useful chap all
round, I believe. Plays racquets for them too.”

“Well,
my friend said he had one very dangerous ball, of the chinaman type. Looks as
if it were going away, and comes in instead.”

“I
don’t think a lot of that,” said Burgess ruefully. “One consolation is, though,
that that sort of ball is easier to watch on a slow wicket. I must tell the
fellows to look out for it.”

“I
should. And, above all, win the toss.”

Burgess and Maclaine, the
Ripton captain, were old acquaintances. They had been at the same preparatory
school, and they had played against one another at rugger and cricket for two
years now.

“We’ll
go in first, Mac,” said Burgess, as they met on the pavilion steps after they
had changed.

“It’s
awfully good of you to suggest it,” said Maclaine, “but I think we’ll toss.
It’s a hobby of mine. You call.”

“Heads.”

“Tails
it is. I ought to have warned you that you hadn’t a chance. I’ve lost the toss
five times running, so I was bound to win today.”

“You’ll
put us in, I suppose?”

“Yes-after
us.”

“Oh,
well, we shan’t have long to wait for our knock, that’s a comfort. Buck up and
send someone in, and let’s get at you.”

And
Burgess went off to tell the groundsman to have plenty of sawdust ready, as he
would want the field paved with it.

The policy of the Ripton
team was obvious from the first over. They meant to force the game. Already the
sun was beginning to peep through the haze. For about an hour run-getting ought
to be a tolerably simple process; but after that hour singles would be as
valuable as threes and boundaries an almost unheard-of luxury.

So
Ripton went in to hit.

The
policy proved successful for a time, as it generally does. Burgess, who relied
on a run that was a series of tiger-like leaps culminating in a spring that
suggested that he meant to lower the long jump record, found himself badly
handicapped by the state of the ground. In spite of frequent libations of
sawdust, he was compelled to tread cautiously, and this robbed his bowling of
much of its pace. The score mounted rapidly. Twenty came in ten minutes. At
thirty-five the first wicket fell, run out.

At
sixty, Ellerby, who had found the pitch too soft for him and had been
expensive, gave place to Grant. Grant bowled what were supposed to be slow
leg-breaks, but which did not always break. The change worked. Maclaine, after
hitting the first two balls to the boundary, skied the third to Bob Jackson in
the deep, and Bob, for whom constant practice had robbed this sort of catch of
its terrors, held it.

A
yorker from Burgess disposed of the next man before he could settle down; but
the score, seventy-four for three wickets, was large enough in view of the fact
that the pitch was already becoming more difficult, and was certain to get
worse, to make Ripton feel that the advantage was with them. Another hour of
play remained before lunch. The deterioration of the wicket would be slow
during that period. The sun, which was now shining brightly, would put in its
deadliest work from two o’clock onwards. Maclaine’s instructions to his men
were to go on hitting.

A too
liberal interpretation of the meaning of the verb “to hit” led to the departure
of two more Riptonians in the course of the next two overs. There is a certain type
of school batsman who considers that to force the game means to swipe blindly
at every ball on the chance of taking it half-volley. This policy sometimes
leads to a boundary or two, as it did on this occasion, but it means that
wickets will fall, as also happened now. Seventy-four for three became
eighty-six for five. Burgess began to look happier.

His
contentment increased when he got the next man leg-before-wicket with the total
unaltered. At this rate Ripton would be out before lunch for under a hundred.

But the
rot stopped with the fall of that wicket. Dashing tactics were laid aside. The
pitch had begun to play tricks, and the pair now in settled down to watch the
ball. They plodded on, scoring slowly and jerkily till the hands of the dock
stood at half-past one. Then Ellerby, who had gone on again instead of Grant,
beat the less steady of the pair with a ball that pitched on the middle stump
and shot into the base of the off. A hundred and twenty had gone up on the
board at the beginning of the over.

That
period which is always so dangerous, when the wicket is bad, the ten minutes
before lunch, proved fatal to two more of the enemy. The last man had just gone
to the wicket, with the score at a hundred and thirty-one, when a quarter to
two arrived, and with it the luncheon interval.

So far
it was anybody’s game.

CHAPTER
XXVIII

MIKE WINS HOME

THE Ripton last-wicket man
was de Freece, the slow bowler. He was apparently a young gentleman wholly free
from the curse of nervousness. He wore a cheerful smile as he took guard before
receiving the first ball after lunch, and Wrykyn had plenty of opportunity of
seeing that that was his normal expression when at the wickets. There is often a
certain looseness about the attack after lunch, and the bowler of googlies took
advantage of it now. He seemed to be a batsman with only one hit; but he had
also a very accurate eye, and his one hit, a semi-circular stroke, which
suggested the golf links rather than the cricket field, came off with
distressing frequency. He mowed Burgess’s first ball to the square-leg
boundary, missed his second, and snicked the third for three over long-slip’s
head. The other batsman played out the over, and de Freece proceeded to treat
Ellerby’s bowling with equal familiarity. The scoring-board showed an increase
of twenty as the result of three overs. Every run was invaluable now, and the
Ripton contingent made the pavilion re-echo as a fluky shot over mid-on’s head
sent up the hundred and fifty.

There
are few things more exasperating to the fielding side than a last-wicket stand.
It resembles in its effect the dragging-out of a book or play after the
dénouement
has been reached. At the fall of the ninth wicket the fieldsmen nearly
always look on their outing as finished. Just a ball or two to the last man,
and it will be their turn to bat. If the last man insists on keeping them out
in the field, they resent it.

What
made it especially irritating now was the knowledge that a straight yorker
would solve the whole thing. But when Burgess bowled a yorker, it was not
straight. And when he bowled a straight ball, it was not a yorker. A four and a
three to de Freece, and a four bye sent up a hundred and sixty.

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. His record score, he explained to Mike, as they walked to
the pavilion, for this or any ground.

The
Ripton total was a hundred and sixty-six.

With the ground in its
usual true, hard condition, Wrykyn would have gone in against a score of a
hundred and sixty-six with the cheery intention of knocking off the runs for
the loss of two or three wickets. It would have been a gentle canter for them.

But
ordinary standards would not apply here. On a good wicket Wrykyn that season
were a two hundred and fifty to three hundred side. On a bad wicket—well, they
had met the Incogniti on a bad wicket, and their total—with Wyatt playing and
making top score—had worked out at a hundred and seven.

A grim
determination to do their best, rather than confidence that their best, when
done, would be anything record-breaking, was the spirit which animated the team
when they opened their innings.

And in
five minutes this had changed to a dull gloom.

The
tragedy started with the very first ball. It hardly seemed that the innings had
begun, when Morris was seen to leave the crease, and make for the pavilion.

“It’s
that googly man,” said Burgess blankly.

“What’s
happened?” shouted a voice from the interior of the first-eleven room.

“Morris
is out!”

“Good
gracious! How?” asked Ellerby, emerging from the room with one pad on his leg
and the other in his hand.

“L.b.w.
First ball.”

My
aunt! Who’s in next? Not me?”

“No. Berridge.
For goodness’ sake, Berry, stick a bat in the way, and not your legs. Watch
that de Freece man like a hawk. He breaks like sin all over the shop. Hullo,
Morris! Bad luck! Were you out, do you think?” A batsman who has been given
l.b.w. is always asked this question on his return to the pavilion, and he
answers it in nine cases out of ten in the negative. Morris was the tenth case.
He thought it was all right, he said.

“Thought
the thing was going to break, but it didn’t.”

“Hear
that, Berry? He doesn’t always break. You must look out for that,” said Burgess
helpfully. Morris sat down and began to take off his pads.

“That
chap’ll have Berry, if he doesn’t look out,” he said.

But
Berridge survived the ordeal. He turned his first ball to leg for a single.

This
brought Marsh to the batting end; and the second tragedy occurred.

It was
evident from the way he shaped that Marsh was short of practice. His visit to
the Infirmary had taken the edge off his batting. He scratched awkwardly at
three balls without hitting them. The last of the over had him in two minds. He
started to play forward, changed his stroke suddenly and tried to step back,
and the next moment the bails had shot up like the
débris
of a small
explosion, and the wicket-keeper was clapping his gloved hands gently and
slowly in the introspective, dreamy way wicket-keepers have on these occasions.