Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

114 The Tour of India All members of the team were presented by Ranji with a volume of pictures whereby to remember their stay with him. These pictures are almost exclusively of the buildings of Jamnagar and scenes of the bags from MCC’s hunting. One, entitled ‘Panther Shooting in Dalasa Hills’, depicts Astill in MCC blazer standing between Wyatt and an ADC of ‘Ranji’, the two cricketers with rifles under their right arms and pith helmets in their left hands. In front of them lies a dead panther. The caption reads ‘Leicester Shire [sic] to the Front’. The position of Astill and the wording of the caption indicate that he was credited with the kill, although Wyatt told me that the animal had been driven into a cave and nobody really knew who had fired the fatal shot. Another photograph shows the entire party with the now one-eyed ‘Ranji’ sitting in the centre facing the artistically arranged but to modern eyes appalling ‘bag’ from the day’s shooting. The handwritten caption specifies one panther, four wild pig, twelve black buck, eight chuck [?], one blue bull and one huny [?]. Wyatt said that before the tour he had done some small-game shooting ‘and I didn’t think much about it; but when I went to India we went big-game hunting and I saw so many things get away wounded, badly wounded, that had done no harm to anything … that it disgusted me so that, like Peter Scott, I never fired a gun again’. Astill, he added, did not seem bothered by the hunting. The final straw. After reflecting on his experience with this hunting party, Bob Wyatt never fired a gun again.