Cricket.  Don’t you just love it?  Playing the Poms, that is.  Two wonderful shellackings in just their first two World Cup games, a loss by more than 100 runs to Australia, the second in what has been called “the worst English cricket performance in 150 years”, and of which Fairfax journalist Rohan Connelly tweeted “See, these are the sort of mismatches you end up with when you let the cricket minnows play against the best.” New Zealand routed the English for a paltry 123 in just 33 overs, whilst exceeding that target in 12.2 overs of brutal batting, 49 runs coming from the 2 overs bowled by Steve Finn.

By the way, the English have from time to time enjoyed their cricket, very much a social game for many, including J.M. Barrie the author of Peter Pan. In Kevin Telfer’s “Peter Pan’s First XI” I came across two poems. The first by Arthur Conan Doyle, the oft times member of Barrie’s social cricket team the ‘Allahakbarries’, and sometime first class cricketer, who wrote this of his one and only first class wicket. It came in August 1900, with Doyle’s team the MCC playing London County, in which he took the wicket of none other than WG Grace, (who had already scored his century). His poem is ‘A Reminiscence of Cricket’. Oh, the first first is by P.G. Wodehouse, who also played for Barrie’s ‘Allahakbarries’ from time to time, however he may not have been the cricketer Doyle was.

P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse “Missed”

The sun in the heavens was beaming

The breeze bore an odour of hay,

My flannels were spotless and gleaming,

My heart was unclouded and gay;

The ladies, all gaily apparelled,

Sat round looking on at the match,

In the tree-tops the dicky-birds carolled,

All was peace till I bungled that catch.

and now
‘A Reminiscence of Cricket’ by Arthur Conan Doyle

Once in my heyday of cricket,
One day I shall ever recall!
I captured that glorious wicket,
The greatest, the grandest of all.

WGGrace

Before me he stands like a vision,
Bearded and burly and brown,
A smile of good humoured derision
As he waits for the first to come down.

A statue from Thebes or Knossos,
A Hercules shrouded in white,
Assyrian bull-like colossus,
He stand there in all his might.

With the beard of a Goth or a Vandal,
His bat hanging ready and free,
His great hairy hands on the handle
And his menacing eyes upon me.

And I – I had tricks for the rabbits,
The feeble of mind or eye,
I could see all the duffer’s bad habits
And where his ruin might lie.

The capture of such might elate one,
But it seemed like one horrible jest
That I should serve tosh to the great one,
Who had broken the hearts of the best.

Well, here goes! Good Lord, what a rotter!
Such a sitter as never was dreamt;
It was clay in the hands of the potter,
But he tapped it with quiet contempt.

The second was better – a leetle;
It was low, but was nearly long-hop;
As the housemaid comes down on the beetle
So down came the bat with a chop.

He was sizing me up with some wonder,
My broken-kneed action and ways;
I could see the grim menace from under
The striped peak that shaded his gaze.

The third was a gift or it looked it-
A foot off the wicket or so;
His huge figure swooped as he hooked it,
His great body swung to the blow.

Still when my dreams are night-marish,
I picture that terrible smite,
It was meant for a neighboring parish,
Or any place out of sight.

But – yes, there’s a but to the story –
The blade swished a trifle too low;
Oh wonder, and vision of glory!
It was up like a shaft from a bow.

Up, up like a towering game bird,
Up, up to a speck in the blue,
And then coming down like the same bird,
Dead straight on the line that it flew.

Good Lord, it was mine! Such a soarer
Would call for a safe pair of hands;
None safer than Derbyshire Storer
,
And there, face uplifted, he stands

Wicket keep Storer, the knowing,
Wary and steady of nerve,
Watching it falling and growing
Marking the pace and curve.

I stood with my two eyes fixed on it,
Paralysed, helpless, inert;
There was ‘plunk’ as the gloves shut upon it,
And he cuddled it up to his shirt.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Out – beyond question or wrangle!
Homeward he lurched to his lunch!
His bat was tucked up at an angle,
His great shoulders curved to a hunch.

Walking he rumbled and grumbled,
Scolding himself and not me;
One glove was off, and he fumbled,
Twisting the other hand free

Did I give Storer the credit
The thanks he so splendidly earned?
It was mere empty talk if I said it,
For Grace had already returned.
THE END