SNAP
CHAPTER I
FERNHALL v. LOAMSHIRE
'What on earth shall we do, Winthrop?' asked one of the Fernhall Eleven of a big fair-faced lad, who seemed to be its captain.
'Do! I'll be shot if I know, Wyndham,' he replied. 'It is bad enough to be a bat short, but really I don't know that we can spare a bowler.'
'Ah, well,' suggested another of the group, 'though Hales did very well for the Twenty-two, it isn't quite the same thing bowling against such a team as Loamshire brings down; he might not "come off" after all, don't you know.'
A quiet grin spread over the captain's face. No one knew better than he did the spirit which prompted Poynter's last remark.
Good bowler though he was, Poynter had often been a sad thorn in Winthrop's side. If you put him on first with the wind in his favour, Poynter would be beautifully good-tempered, and bowl sometimes like a very Spofforth. Only then sometimes he wouldn't! Sometimes an irreverent batsman from Loamshire who had never heard of Poynter's break from the leg would hit him incontinently for six, and perhaps do it twice in one over. Then Poynter got angry. His arms began to work like a windmill. He tried to bowl rather faster than Spofforth ever did; about three times as fast as Nature ever meant John Poynter to. The result of this was always the same. First he pitched them short, and the delighted batsman cut them for three; then he pitched them up, and that malicious person felt a thrill of pleasure go through his whole body as he either drove them or got them away to square leg. Then Winthrop had to take him off. This was when the trouble began. Sullenly Poynter would take his place in the field—and it was not every place in the field which suited him. If you put him in the deep field, he growled at the folly which risked straining a bowler's arm by shying. If you put him close in, he grumbled at the risk he ran of having those dexterous fingers of his damaged by a sharp cut or a 'sweet' drive. For of course he always expected to be put on again, and from the time that he reached his place until the time that he was again put into possession of the ball he did nothing but watch his rival with malicious envy, making a mental bowling analysis for him, in which he took far more note of the hits (or wides if there were any) than he did of the maiden overs which were bowled.
But Frank Winthrop was a diplomatist, as a cricket captain should be, so, though he grinned, he only replied, 'That's true enough, Poynter, but I must have some ordinary straight stuff, such as Hales's, to rest you and Rolles, and put these fellows off their guard against your curly ones.'
'Yes, I suppose it is a mistake to bowl a fellow good balls all the time. It makes him play too carefully,' replied the self-satisfied Poynter.
'Well, but, Winthrop,' insisted the first speaker, 'if you don't do without a change bowler, what will you do? That other fellow in the Twenty-two doesn't bowl well enough, but there are lots of them useful bats.'