[A SUBSTITUTE.]
THE STORY OF MY LAST CRICKET-MATCH.
CHAPTER I.
I AM APPOINTED CAPTAIN.
I have some idea of cricket--not much, perhaps, but I certainly have some. I was not in the 'Varsity team, nor near it; but I played in the Freshman's match, and provided myself with spectacles. I was nearly in the school team once. That was when I carried my bat for forty-five. I must own that my performance was a surprise to everyone--and to myself among the rest. But as I never repeated it--or anything like it--they left me, very wisely, out of the eleven.
Thus it will be seen that, from a cricketing point of view, I did not, even in my best days, come up to first-rate form; and my best days were, reckoning from last summer, quite fifteen years ago. During those fifteen years I do not remember once handling a bat, far less hitting at a cricket-ball with one; and yet, in this state of unpreparedness, I had the presumption last summer to captain a team, and to lead them on--well, not to victory but to disgrace. It's a fact. The match was Storwell v. Latchmere. Storwell was my team; and as I do not think a more remarkable match was ever known in the whole annals of cricketing history, I here venture to report it.
When they first asked me to play I thought they were mad. Storwell-on-Sea is a village on the south coast--I beg pardon; I believe it is called by the inhabitants a town. It is a pretty place, and not unknown--in the locality. It has a season and all that kind of thing, and it was during the season I was there. And one day a deputation of the inhabitants called on me at my lodgings to ask if I would lead the local cricket club to, say, victory. As I have said, my first impression was that they were mad; either that, or else that they were "playing it off" on the unprotected stranger.
I hinted so much to the deputation. The deputation smiled. The chief spokesman was the local barber; his name was Sapsworth. He explained that Mr. Wingrave had sent them there. Wingrave was the vicar; we were "up" together, and he must have known quite well whereabouts my cricketing form came in. I decided to crush the deputation before the thing went farther.
"To show you the sort of man you propose should captain you, I need only mention that it is more than fifteen years since I had a bat in my hand."
But the admission did not crush them: quite the other way. It opened the floodgates of their eloquence.