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

57 The Outcrop; Walpole; Waugh; Wodehouse Et Al that straitened family finances prevented him from taking up a university place. He was a consummate sportsman, something of a fast bowler, who, to his lifelong delight, took 7 for 50 in the high spot fixture of the summer against Tonbridge. He was a frequent wearer of the Worcestershire tie who, just as Conan Doyle named the Holmes brothers after two professional cricketers, christened Jeeves after Percy Jeeves the Warwickshire bowler. No one could have been more perfectly placed, by attitude and aptitude and, with fluent pen, ability, to write the anthem to Athleticism as that cult reached its acme in the Edwardian era. Furthermore, his yarn of Michael Jackson and his brothers was inspired by the famous Fosters of Worcestershire. To my shame, I do not possess a copy of Mike but I know a bloke who does – and my good friend Julian Baker, the acclaimed horn player and tutor and Wodehouse devotee, kindly loaned me his. Actually, the publishing history of Mike’s adventures is complicated. Having been serialised and printed in book form before World War One, PG Wodehouse published the second half of the book under the title of Enter Psmith, a character for whom both his readers and himself had a strong affection and whose adventures were a forerunner of the Wooster and Blandings tales. Psmith tends to dominate the second half of Mike and he then enjoyed a life of his own in four Wodehousian novels. Mike survived as a supporting player. In Psmith in the City Psmith and he are employed in the tedious task of banking, a fate which had overtaken PG Wodehouse himself for a short time. Mike has a net or two at Lord’s and plays for the New Asiatic bank on Saturdays, ‘knocking’ the cover off some rather ordinary club bowling.’ and wishing he could make his living as a cricketer. Out of the blue his brother, the top-class batsman Joe Jackson asks him to play for the county against Middlesex at Lord’s. Mike walks out of the bank, legs it to Lord’s and shares in a big stand, Joe 183, Mike 148, these stirring events lovingly detailed by PG Wodehouse. Psmith’s father agrees to finance Mike as Psmith’s henchman at Cambridge and afterwards as the