Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

33 The Template; The Fifth Form At St Dominic’s a model for scores of writers. Readable as Tom Brown’s Schooldays still is, there are, frankly, some lumpy and disjointed, even quaint, bits – because life is lumpy, disjointed and even quaint on occasion. Tibby Reed had no such worries with his wholly fictitious concept. That is not to say it was unconvincing; several readers claimed that their school was St Dominic’s – but the very fact that quite a few schools were so labelled indicates the generality of Reed’s approach. It was never so specific as in Thomas Hughes’ Rugby. It is like those academic arguments about the originals of fictional characters; was Mr Micawber based on Charles Dickens’ own father or Mrs Nickleby on his mother? Ultimately, they are , of course, fictional – and the creation of a completely fictional model of boarding school must always be borne in mind when trying to assess its future impact on state educational policy and, in consequence, the role of cricket therein. All the book-length tales of Tibby Reed were serialised in The Boy’s Own Paper (BOP) . Discussion of his involvement in its publication is better suited to Chapter Four which deals with the first flush of schoolboy periodicals. Suffice it for now to underline his, appropriately, businesslike adoption of this device. In ‘Dominic’s’ and his other longer stories his careful planning and presentation is well-nigh impeccable. There is no padding to fill out an instalment; there is no sign of a rushed or thinly covered aspect. Moreover, each concise episode could be read alone and appreciated, something of a virtue in a schoolboy world of erratic purchase and indiscriminate swapping. And yet these scrupulously plotted stories, read at book length, retain a smoothness of flow that is exemplary. Each book is a silver chain of silver links. For the opening BOP in 1879 Tibby Reed wrote a story under the pseudonym of ‘an Old Boy’ called My First Football Match , based on Pankhurst School and, given its enthusiastic reception, he stuck to the sporting theme with The Pankhurst Paper Chase and The Pankhurst Boat Race. He was encouraged to write a longer tale and obliged in