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

41 The Template; The Fifth Form At St Dominic’s entirely of fifth formers, caused more excitement than usual. As was usual with all literary school cricket matches, the whole school lined the boundary; ‘every ball and every hit were marked and applauded if empires depended on them’. The game commences on a high note; Oliver bowls Raleigh, the school captain, first ball. The Sixth recovers, managing a decent 84, all out, and they tumble out their opponents for 51, Horace Wraysford top-scoring. In their second innings – and it is of note that at St Dominic’s, as was then the common procedure elsewhere, they had not succumbed to the modish habit of playing half a game – the Sixth gathered a further 36, humbled by the bowling of Horace and Oliver. 70 to win and time leaking away..Oliver holds his end up as wickets fall, until the ninth wicket goes leaving the School needing nine. In comes ‘ incompetent and flurried Webster’, recipient of ‘a duck’s egg’ in the first innings. ‘Every ball, every piece of fielding was cheered by one side, and every hit and every piece of play was as vehemently cheered by the other.’ The score creeps up to 69. Raleigh bowls and Oliver steers it into the slips – where Baynes has come in close ‘and ‘saved the Sixth by one of the neatest catches that had ever been seen in a Dominican match.’ A tie. Phew! To put that into context, a whole chapter was devoted to this match – or – recollecting that this novel was originally serialised, the whole of the instalment for that issue, something like 5000 words in episode 14. Nor was the cricket then forgotten, for the Tadpoles and Guinea Pigs enter the lists against each other, followed by ‘the Junior Cricket Feast’, with a ‘vast spread of plum cake, buns and ginger beer’. The banquet is followed by entertainment, including ‘time-honoured Dominican cricket songs’, one of which - ‘There was a little lad (well bowled) and a little bat he had (well bowled)’ – is quoted. Throughout the book the virtues of Manliness, steadiness at football, only fighting when there is good cause, are quietly extolled without too much of a flourish. But at the last the