And so he did, at the last moment. The other members having cordially supported the captain’s several propositions, they were carried unanimously by our quorum of four, and immediately acted upon. Young Black, with two other juniors, and three of the best men we could pick out from the visitors that were at Little Peddlington for the season that year—and there were some first-rate cricketers, too, amongst them—made up our scratch eleven, Charley Bates relenting when he found that we would have played without him. And a challenge having been sent to the Piccadilly Inimitables without delay, which they as promptly accepted, the match was fixed to come off, on our ground, of course, on the opening days of the ensuing week—provided, as the secretary of our opponents’ club, very offensively as we thought, added in a postscript to his communication, the contest was not settled on the first day’s play. But they reckoned without their host when they tackled the Little Peddlingtonians, as you will see.
We fellows who formed the Little Peddlington Cricket Club were for the most part studying there under a noted tutor, who prepared us for the army, Woolwich, or India; but we admitted a few of the townspeople.
A cricket match at such a retired spot opened a field of excitement to both residents and summer tourists alike. Even an ordinary contest, such as we sometimes indulged in with the Hammerton or Smithwick clubs, or the Bognor garrison, would have aroused considerable interest in the vicinity of Little Peddlington; but when it became known that we were going to play the celebrated Piccadilly Inimitables, who had licked Lancashire and Yorkshire, and almost every county eleven they had met in their cricketing tour from the north to the south of England, there was nothing else talked about from one end of our seaside town to the other, the news spreading to the adjacent hamlets, and villages beyond, until it reached the cathedral city twenty miles away.
Under these circumstances it cannot be wondered at that when Monday, the opening day of the match—which turned out beautifully fine for a wonder, as it always rained on the very slightest provocation at Little Peddlington—arrived, there was such a crowd of carriages and drags, filled to their utmost capacity, as to astonish even the memory of that far-famed individual “the oldest inhabitant.” These were drawn up in a sort of semicircle around our cricket ground—a charmingly situated spot with a very wide area, and nicely sheltered by rows of waving elms from the hot August sun—and besides the “carriage folk,” as the rustics termed them, came on foot everybody in the neighbourhood, besides all Little Peddlington itself.
The Piccadilly Inimitables arrived early in the morning, having stopped overnight at Brighton, where they had scored their last victory over the Sussex eleven, and which place was not so remote from Little Peddlington as you might suppose, consequently we were able to commence the match in good time, and as our club won the toss for first innings we buckled to at once for the fray, sending in John Hardy, who had the reputation with us of being a “sticker,” and the grumbling Charley Bates, to the wickets punctually at eleven o’clock.
The bowling at the beginning was rather shady, the Inimitables not being accustomed to the ground, which our batsmen, of course, were perfectly familiar with; so runs got piled on in a way that raised our hopes pretty considerably, especially when Sidney Grant took Charley Bates’s place—that worthy having in his second over skied a ball that was immediately caught, sending him out for five runs, two singles and a three, or two more than he had totalled in his last match.
It was a sight to see Sidney as he cut and drove the slow and fast bowlers of our opponents’ team for four almost every over; whilst John Hardy backed him up ably by remaining, as he was instructed, strictly on the defensive, and blocking every ball that came at all near his wicket Sidney was the run-getter; he had simply to run.
We had scored thirty-eight for the loss of only one wicket, and the captain seemed to be well set and good to make the century—as he had done a month before in our match with the Smithwick Club—when a new bowler went on at the lower end of the ground, and “a change came over the spirit of our dream.”
“I don’t like the way that chap walks up to the wicket,” said Tom Atkins to me. “I saw him taking Sidney’s measure when he was serving as long-stop, and if he doesn’t play carefully, he’ll bowl him out almost with his first ball.”
“Not he,” said I sanguinely. “He seems too confident.”