Mike

Mike watched him go with much the same feelings as those of a man who turns away from the platform after seeing a friend off on a long railway journey.  His departure upset the scheme of things.  For himself he had no fear now.  He might possibly get out off his next ball, but he felt set enough to stay at the wickets till nightfall.  He had had narrow escapes from de Freece, but he was full of that conviction, which comes to all batsmen on occasion, that this was his day.  He had made twenty-six, and the wicket was getting easier.  He could feel the sting going out of the bowling every over.

Henfrey, the next man in, was a promising rather than an effective bat.  He had an excellent style, but he was uncertain. (Two years later, when he captained the Wrykyn teams, he made a lot of runs.) But this season his batting had been spasmodic.

To-day he never looked like settling down.  He survived an over from de Freece, and hit a fast change bowler who had been put on at the other end for a couple of fluky fours.  Then Mike got the bowling for three consecutive overs, and raised the score to a hundred and twenty-six.  A bye brought Henfrey to the batting end again, and de Freece’s pet googly, which had not been much in evidence hitherto, led to his snicking an easy catch into short-slip’s hands.

A hundred and twenty-seven for seven against a total of a hundred and sixty-six gives the impression that the batting side has the advantage.  In the present case, however, it was Ripton who were really in the better position.  Apparently, Wrykyn had three more wickets to fall.  Practically they had only one, for neither Ashe, nor Grant, nor Devenish had any pretensions to be considered batsmen.  Ashe was the school wicket-keeper.  Grant and Devenish were bowlers.  Between them the three could not be relied on for a dozen in a decent match.

Mike watched Ashe shape with a sinking heart.  The wicket-keeper looked like a man who feels that his hour has come.  Mike could see him licking his lips.  There was nervousness written all over him.

He was not kept long in suspense.  De Freece’s first ball made a hideous wreck of his wicket.

“Over,” said the umpire.

Mike felt that the school’s one chance now lay in his keeping the bowling.  But how was he to do this?  It suddenly occurred to him that it was a delicate position that he was in.  It was not often that he was troubled by an inconvenient modesty, but this happened now.  Grant was a fellow he hardly knew, and a school prefect to boot.  Could he go up to him and explain that he, Jackson, did not consider him competent to bat in this crisis?  Would not this get about and be accounted to him for side?  He had made forty, but even so....

Fortunately Grant solved the problem on his own account.  He came up to Mike and spoke with an earnestness born of nerves.  “For goodness sake,” he whispered, “collar the bowling all you know, or we’re done.  I shall get outed first ball.”

“All right,” said Mike, and set his teeth.  Forty to win!  A large order.  But it was going to be done.  His whole existence seemed to concentrate itself on those forty runs.

The fast bowler, who was the last of several changes that had been tried at the other end, was well-meaning but erratic.  The wicket was almost true again now, and it was possible to take liberties.

Mike took them.

A distant clapping from the pavilion, taken up a moment later all round the ground, and echoed by the Ripton fieldsmen, announced that he had reached his fifty.

The last ball of the over he mishit.  It rolled in the direction of third man.

“Come on,” shouted Grant.

Mike and the ball arrived at the opposite wicket almost simultaneously.  Another fraction of a second, and he would have been run out.

The last balls of the next two overs provided repetitions of this performance.  But each time luck was with him, and his bat was across the crease before the bails were off.  The telegraph-board showed a hundred and fifty.

The next over was doubly sensational.  The original medium-paced bowler had gone on again in place of the fast man, and for the first five balls he could not find his length.  During those five balls Mike raised the score to a hundred and sixty.

But the sixth was of a different kind.  Faster than the rest and of a perfect length, it all but got through Mike’s defence.  As it was, he stopped it.  But he did not score.  The umpire called “Over!” and there was Grant at the batting end, with de Freece smiling pleasantly as he walked back to begin his run with the comfortable reflection that at last he had got somebody except Mike to bowl at.

That over was an experience Mike never forgot.