Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

111 The Tour of India for a draw since, after curtailments of play due to rain on the first two days, All-Ceylon had lost only three wickets in reply to MCC’s 431 for eight declared, of which Astill’s 65 was the second-highest individual effort. On the last day, however, he devastated the opposition by removing seven batsmen for only 18 runs in 15.2 overs as they tumbled from 61 for three to 105 all out. After that he left Tate and Geary to conclude the conquest. Ten days passed before the next match, most spent in travelling. The S.S.City of Simla carried them swiftly from the fragrance of the cinnamon groves around Colombo back to Calcutta whence a train conveyed them for relaxation at the old Rajput capital of Agra. This relaxation necessarily took the form of a visit to marvel at the wondrous, harmonious beauty of the Taj Mahal, the megalomaniacal Shah Jehan’s tomb for himself and his favourite wife set not, as normal, in the centre of the chahar- bagh but, surely deliberately and symbolically, at one end, the position in the celestial paradise of the throne of God according to Sufi tradition; but doubtless the tourists were simply regaled with the tale of how the deposed shah spent his declining years gazing at it from captivity in the nearby Agra Fort. The next day, fifty miles north, the bewildered party must have wondered where they were as they played against past and present students of Aligarh University with its great quadrangles rivalling those of Oxford and Cambridge. It had been founded as the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who despite being declared a heretic in Mecca persisted in his plan to provide his co-religionists with an institution where they could learn modern scientific methods and be inculcated with European ideas to save them from ‘political inanition’. 210 Although they had a notable record in cricket matches against good teams, they were beaten easily by MCC in a low-scoring game. Astill took three for 28 in the university’s second innings, but Mercer stole the show by taking eight wickets (as did Tate) and coming out to bat in a fez. The next morning they took the train to Delhi for further cricket and further entertainment. Despite having been the capital for a decade and a half, it hosted only three matches, a one-day encounter with Delhi and District against whom Astill had three wickets for 16 runs, a light-hearted game against the Delhi Ladies’ Cricket Club when the men defended four stumps with bat held in one hand, and a more serious three-day encounter in which Astill disposed of three of the first four batsmen and two lower down to take five for 45 and the only wicket in Northern India’s 260 for one at their second attempt. Entertainment included not only a ball attended by the viceroy Lord Irwin and his wife, at which the vicereine famously but accidentally trod on Maurice Tate’s foot, but also an occasion organized by the players themselves: ‘[one] evening at the Delhi Club … the team gathered around the piano and accompanied by Ewart Astill and his banjo, they had a “terrific sing-song” into the early hours of the following morning’. 211 210 Headlam, Ten Thousand Miles , pp 171-173. 211 Hignell, Jack Mercer , p 54.