Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

112 The Tour of India The Maharaja of Patiala, who had already appeared in four matches on the tour, now laid on his own train for MCC to travel to his capital where he led his own team against them. The match was held on a splendid batting wicket made true by rollers pulled by elephants at the landscaped Oval in the Bardari Palace, to which the players were driven in state coaches before being watched from a tent by 300 of the maharaja’s wives. Perhaps worn out by his efforts on the banjo in Delhi, Astill took no wicket and was lbw for a mere eight, but this was to an old nemesis, Wilfred Rhodes who, with Leyland, Dolphin and Tarrant, all of whom were coaching in India, appeared in the maharaja’s colours to provide indubitably the stiffest opposition encountered by MCC in this their last contest. Astill’s final figures in all matches (including those of a single day’s duration) was 694 runs at an average of 27.76 with four fifties and 81 wickets, third highest behind Tate and Geary, at 20.67 each. He had been well worth his selection. Cricket was over, entertainment was not. A trip in Rolls-Royces to the Simla hills, where a seven-course lunch in the jungle could hardly have improved their aim, initiated a few days of big-game hunting before they returned to Patiala to eat a lavish banquet from golden plates. From the scarcely conceivable opulence of Patiala to poverty-stricken Nawanagar was a journey of two days. ‘Poverty-stricken’ is a relative term, and Nawanagar’s Jam Sahib sent a fleet of gold and silver carriages to convey them to the Lal Palace in his capital Jamnagar. 212 However much some of the players may have been longing for home, none would have missed their week-long visit as guests of the Jam Sahib. All knew and revered him by reputation, some actually knew him personally, Astill had even played under him for MCC versus Oxford University at Lord’s in 1912 when K.S.Ranjitsinhji, as he was then known, had him bowling 37 overs 213 on a very easy wicket. Each member of the party was now given his personal servant, but when one player lost a small item from his room and his servant denied the theft, ‘Ranji’ summarily dismissed all these servants, who were reinstated only after protests from the players. 214 Talk of cricket naturally suited host and guests, and ‘Ranji’ was quite willing to confide in them. Bob Wyatt, who had once been told by C.B.Fry that ‘Ranji’ was a genius, now asked ‘Ranji’ for his opinion on Fry and was informed that despite a lack of ability the latter had made himself a wonderful bat, but that sometimes when the two were having a long stand he, ‘Ranji’, became bored, ran out Fry and subsequently apologized profusely in the dressing-room to the victim who never realised that he had been run out on purpose. Did this perhaps make any of the MCC party ponder one sentence in the prayer that ‘Ranji’ wrote, a prayer sufficiently well known as to be ‘the basis of six favourite maxims of His Majesty 212 Jamnagar has now also replaced Nawanagar as the name for the whole region. 213 Astill bowled for about three hours for his three for 115, but his fellow-opener Jack King was kept on for four and a quarter hours (six for 167 in 53 overs). Oxford made 406. 214 A personal recollection of R.E.S.Wyatt.