"Well, they don't put it that way, quite. The pitch is allowed on the cows' pasture land."
"I suppose if we make a hundred we shall do well?" asked somebody.
"If we make fifty we shall declare," I said. "By Jove, Bolton, that's a pretty smart move."
I may not know all the technical terms, but I do understand the idea of chess. The editor was a pawn up and three to play, and had just advanced his queen against Bolton's king, putting on a lot of check side as it seemed to me. Of course, I expected Bolton would have to retire his king; but not he! He laid a stymie with his bishop, and it was the editor's queen that had to withdraw. Yet Bolton was only spare man at Cambridge!
"I am not at all sure," I said, "that chess is not a finer game even than solitaire."
"It's a finer game than cricket," said Bolton, putting his bishop back in the slips again.
"No," said the editor. "Cricket is the finest game in the world. For why? I will tell you."
"Thanks to the glorious uncertainty of our national pastime," began the journalist, from his next Monday's article.
"No, thanks to the fact that it is a game in which one can produce the maximum of effect with the minimum of skill. Take my own case. I am not a batsman, I shall never make ten runs in an innings, yet how few people realise that! I go in first wicket down, wearing my M.C.C. cap. Having taken guard with the help of a bail, I adopt Palairet's stance at the wicket. Then the bowler delivers: either to the off, to leg, or straight. If it is to the off, I shoulder my bat and sneer at it. If it is to leg, I swing at it. I have a beautiful swing, which is alone worth the money. Probably I miss, but the bowler fully understands that it is because I have not yet got the pace of the wicket. Sooner or later he sends down a straight one, whereupon I proceed to glide it to leg. You will see the stroke in Beldam's book. Of course, I miss the ball, and am given out l.b.w. Then the look of astonishment that passes over my face, the bewildered inquiry of the wicket-keeper, and finally the shrug of good-humoured resignation as I walk from the crease! Nine times out of ten square-leg asks the umpire what county I play for. That is cricket."
"Quite so," I said, when he had finished. "There's only one flaw in it. That is that quite possibly you may have to go in last to-day. You'll have to think of some other plan. Also on this wicket the ball always goes well over your head. You couldn't be l.b.w. if you tried."