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

52 The Outcrop; Walpole; Waugh; Wodehouse Et Al thrust of the book is his periodic conflict with Mr Buller, the personification of crude athleticism and the representation of many a brutish physical education teacher. Nonetheless, near the end of the book, Gordon scores 84 in his last cricket match at Fernhurst. The game finds the underdogs, A-K Senior facing Buller’s highly favoured team in the house trophy final. With his pals, Collins and Foster, in plucky support, Gordon enables A-K Senior to emerge victorious: ‘The umpire’s hand rose. A wild shriek rose from the crowd. Gordon’s last game at Fernhurst was over; his last triumph had come; at last ‘Sampson had acquitted himself like Samson’’. ‘The Loom’ was all too convincing. The characters were easily spotted in Sherborne circles. Alec Waugh had himself been house captain, a valued member of the 1 st XV rugger team and a fine schoolboy cricketer. He had topped the 1 st XI averages in his last summer – and he had scored 77 in his final house match. Mr Buller was a scarcely disguised version of GM Carey, an Old Shirburnian, who had captained Oxford University and had been capped by England as a rugby forward. He was a sports-mad housemaster at his old school. Alec Waugh and he evidently did have contentious times at Sherborne. There were ructions but, eventually, Alec Waugh admitted he had been unkind in his caricature and that he admired many of GM Carey’s sporting ideals. He was received back into the Old Shirburnian kirk and he sent his sons to the school. Alec Waugh was four years older than his brother Evelyn. A penny-halfpenny child psychologist might surmise the younger Waugh’s hatred of cricket began in the nursery where his brother’s indoor cricket disturbed his infantile rest. The two grew up to be friendly strangers, each representing the far ends of the pro-and anti-games gamut. Alec Waugh played for a range of mainly itinerant teams as an adult, including the Stoics, the Thespids, the Old Broughtonians, Richmond and the Chiltern Ramblers. We know something of his cricketing exploits because he