Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

110 wallow’, 208 and then through jungle down to Dhanushkodi and a crossing of the shallow but ‘dreaded Palk Strait’, which Tate claims ‘lived up to its reputation for roughness. The boat [the SS Egmore ] tossed like a cockle- shell and the smell of decaying fish added to the horrors of the voyage.’ Once in Ceylon [now Sri Lanka], the ‘garden of the world’, Astill and Jack Mercer were billeted with a wealthy tea-planter. Did he remember and chat about Astill’s old colleague and captain V.F.S. (‘Very-Fast-Scoring’) Crawford, who had left his native Leicestershire in 1910 to plant tea in Ceylon only to succumb six years later to pneumonia and dysentery? Astill thrived in the excessive heat and humidity of Ceylon which were so great that Tate claims that in one game ‘the flannels of one of their bowlers turned completely black with perspiration’. 209 The four matches provided him with his two best all-round performances of the tour and his record in the country was 170 runs at 42.50 and 18 wickets at 16.11. Under the eye of the governor, Sir Hugh Clifford, the Europeans were the first to suffer when, largely through removing their only four batsmen to reach double figures, Astill took five for 52 in the first innings, and with a personal contribution of 66 added 103 for the fifth wicket in only seventy minutes with Parsons. MCC could not, however, force a victory in two days. Six wickets and 30 runs followed against the Ceylonese but failure ensued in a match in tea-country at Daruwella. The final match, being against All-Ceylon, was another unofficial ‘Test’. It seemed destined 208 Headlam, Ten Thousand Miles , p 75. 209 My Cricketing Reminiscences , p 106. The Tour of India Treated like royalty! An impression of how welcome the MCC party was treated in Ceylon can be gained from this group picture taken in Kandy. Astill can be seen on the extreme right of the group.