A game of ball
ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME
The Cricket Match Hugh de Selincourt (Leslie Frewin 25s) It is more than forty years since Hugh de Selincourt wrote The Cricket Match and now it is surely unchallenged as 'the' match of all time.
Village cricket is a game where personal- ity and pitch, outfield and umpires all con- spire to equate the cricketer with the rabbit and ensure that drama is never far from the crease. Tillingfold and Raveley were rich in types and every one is authentic, starting with the fifteen year old mini-hero who woke at 5 am with that tingling anticipa- tion of which the true cricketer is never cured. We meet the winning XI in their homes and taste all their idiosyncracies. We meet their friends and supporters and wives =How can a man get so excited about a game of ball?'
On the field they are a team but each has his recognisable (and predictable) part to play. The fast bowler 'who could not be called erratic because that would imply some basis of intention . . . '; the fielder who always muffed his chances but who at a critical moment of the match 'had to catch it or be destroyed'; the hitter (why do they always have gaps in their teeth?) who lifted them into the pond; and the round. benevolent poker whose wife insisted that cricket was too violent and insisted on clothing him in an under-vest, so much worse when called an 'underfug'.
The rival captains, of course, knew the game and all its finer points. The value for example of the lull toss', the more deadly when it slips out of the bowler's fingers before he means it to do so. The captain of this winning side was so keen that mis- hap led to sarcasm. To mid-off, who regul- arly retreated a step whenever the ball was struck towards him, the captain would repeat the refrain 'always try a catch'.
Even the spectators make their contribu- tion, for is not the local schoolmaster over- heard confiding to a small boy that 'a legbye is a bye which hits the wicket- keeper's pads on the leg side'? Who won, Tillingfold or Raveley? And by what mar- gin? Suffice it to say that the losing scorer in the tense excitement broke off his pencil point with a snap, while young Horace Caine slept soundly that night as a new capped hero.
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