Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

177 A Radio Interview the palace in which we lived for seven days. ‘Ranji’, knowing we had had enough cricket, never let us see a cricket bat. Big game shooting of all kinds made the visit very exciting. I am afraid time hardly permits me to tell you all the details of how Bobby Wyatt and I bagged a panther, after it had been driven past us more than once, ourselves safe in quite a large brick building, and firing from a parapet; or how my colleague George Geary shot the [another] panther and saved the life of the decoy goat. Author’s Note: John Astill has also given Leicestershire C.C.C. his uncle’s photograph album of the 1925/26 tour of the West Indies and a medal commemorating his training in 1919 on the Browning Automatic Rifle. There came also recently into the Club’s possession a Gunn and Moore bat autographed by Ewart Astill and purchased at McRobies (of whose firm he was a director). Wyatt, Astill and an ADC of ‘Ranji’ with the panther that they might or might not have shot (see Chapter Ten).