But it was after Hearne was out leg-before to Gilligan and Murrell had failed, that the excitement really started. Twelve runs were wanted, I think, when Durston came in to bat. They got them somehow, amazingly, but they got them. There was a shriek of hysterical excitement every time the ball hit the middle of the bat and trickled safely to mid on. There were byes, and there was an overthrow, and miraculously Durston turned Gilligan to leg and along the ground. It is the only good stroke that I have ever seen him make. Sometimes I think I am uncharitable to Durston. “He is not so awfully bad,” I tell myself, “not worse, really, than Mignon was, or Rushby. It is only that there is so much of him to look incompetent.” And then I see him bat again and I say, “No, really he is absolutely the worst, without exception the worst. There can be no man living whom the captain could, save as a practical joke, put in No. 11 for a side of which Durston was a member.” But on Whit Monday, when he made that stroke for two off Gilligan, he was cheered as has rarely any stroke by Hobbs been cheered, and the large, jolly, holiday crowd poured homewards the happier for his batting.
Every summer has its own landmarks, its own sensations, its own big matches; even this cold and miserable spring of numb fingers and dropped catches. There is no season so poor that we cannot look back to it for some things gratefully. And the future will be as good; better, perhaps. And yet——. I wonder whether ever again there will be a day at Lord’s to equal that of the 31st of August three years ago.
No cricketer will need me to remind him of what happened then, or to retell the story of “Plum” Warner’s last and greatest match. Enough to say that it was the most dramatic, the most fitting thing that has happened in any sport in any country. If no championship even had been at stake it would have been a great, a memorable match. With the championship dependent on the result it was a titanic battle. But with the added sentiment of Warner’s last appearance—such things come only once in a generation.
I was not there on the first day. I was playing cricket at Hayward’s Heath, and I remember the excitement with which I tore open the first issue of the Evening Argus to see which side had won the toss. Middlesex batting. I gave a sigh of relief. That will be all right, I thought. A plumb wicket. The Surrey bowling is weak. They took all day yesterday to get out Northampton. There will be three hundred on the board by six o’clock; and then came edition after edition with the news that things were not going well at Lord’s. Lee out, Hearne out. Hendren only 41; 109 for 5; 149 for 6. And then tardily in the last issue news of a stand starting between Warner and Greville Stevens.
But even so, it was not good enough. To bat all day and only make 250. And all through the Monday I watched hour by hour the match and championship slip away. Catches were put down; the bowling had no sting. And in the intervals one read on the tape machine of the manner of mess that Lancashire were making of Worcester in the north. I left the ground when Fender declared his innings closed. Seventy-three runs behind. Only a day left for play. We could make a draw of it probably if we wanted to. But only with a win could we win the championship. It was no use. It was over. Better not see the end.
And yet I went down there on the Tuesday. There was still a chance; should we win, I should never forgive myself had I not been there to cheer the team. And hope came back to me when I met “Skipper” Pawling on the steps of the pavilion. “It’s all right, my boy,” he said; “it’s all right. We’ll just manage it.” Mrs Warner had come down with white heather for the professionals. And I can still hear the eager, high-pitched tension of her voice, “We shall do it, shan’t we, Mr Pawling.” I am not certain that Sydney Pawling is not the most vivid memory to me of that long August day. I can see him drawing his great hand across his mouth; I can see him muttering when Hearne came in to bat, “He’s looking ill; fine drawn. I must send him over some champagne; some champagne.” And I can remember him almost in tears at the end of the day as the Surrey wickets fell.
But then we were all of us, I think, very near to tears at the end of that great evening. When I went to Lord’s for the first time in a sailor suit in the spring of 1904, I cried when Warner’s wicket fell, and I rather think I cried at the end of it all at twenty past six on the thirty-first of August, when the huge crowd swept over the playing field and carried him shoulder high to the pavilion.
Will Lord’s ever see such a scene again? Will Lord’s ever again know anything to equal the excitement of that last hour, from the moment when Hendren caught Shepherd high over his left shoulder as he backed against the screen? It was the turning-point, that catch. In half the time Surrey had got half the runs, and only two wickets had gone down. Then came that catch which only Hendren could have held off a stroke that from the other end would have been a six. It was a match again. Fender came in next; there was an awful hush. Half an hour of Fender and the match was Surrey’s. But he hit right across a straight length ball from Durston. 112-4-1. Still there was Peach to come, and Reay, and Hitch and Ducat, with Sandham batting beautifully at the other end. The odds were still on Surrey. But Hearne and Stevens did not fail their captain in that last hour. Hendren, of all people, missed Hitch low down at mid-wicket, but the bowlers could afford to do without their fielders. Wicket after wicket fell. 176 for 9, and Rushby came in, swinging his arms, while the crowd laughed. Rushby, a clown batsman; nothing more. But he stood there, and singles began to come; and one looked at the clock and reminded oneself that Rushby had once stayed in while Crawford put on 80. Twelve runs in ten minutes; would the end never come? Then an unplayable ball from Stevens. It was all over. The ball trickled to short leg. Hearne and Hendren rushed from the slips after it. Hearne got there first, ran with his “souvenir” to the pavilion. And the great crowd swarmed about the wicket.
I do not expect ever to see again anything to equal it. But I am proud and glad to have been there, to have taken part in that tribute to the greatest hearted cricketer the world has ever known.