The Lost Bowlers: (A Cricket Story)

We had arrived at Marvis Bay, and were to play the last match of our tour on the following morning. Marvis Bay is in Devonshire. We always take it last on our fixture-list, so as to end happily, as it were. Sidmouth may rout us, and Seaton may make us hunt leather till the soles of our boots wear through; but it is the boast of the Weary Willies that against Marvis Bay they never fail to get their own back. As a matter of fact, we hardly treat the thing as a match. We look on it as a picnic. We have a splendid time—the place is a paradise and the local curate a sportsman to his fingertips—and the actual game is a treat after the stern struggles of the earlier part of the tour. It is in the Marvis Bay match that I take my annual wicket, usually through a catch in the deep; while Geake, our leg-break artist, generally seizes the opportunity of playing his great double-figure innings, and pulling his average for the season out of the realms of the minuses. Except for the curate, Dacre, who played for Cambridge in the nineties and is a sound and pretty bat of the Jimmy Douglas type, the local team is composed of unskilled labourers. They hit hard and high and in a semicircle. Geake has six men in the country, and invariably reaps a plenteous harvest of wickets. When we go in it is an understood thing among us that every possible risk must be taken, and if a batsman shows symptoms of sitting on the splice and playing himself in, his partner feels it a duty to run him out at the earliest possible moment. I remember one year Sharples, our fast bowler, said he had never made a century, and wanted to see what it felt like, so he was going to play himself in against Marvis Bay, and take no risks. His statement was coldly received, and on the score-sheet of the match you will find these words are written:— J. B. Sharples, run out … … … 0 The wicked never prosper. We were gathered together in the parlour of the only inn the village possesses on the night before the match, very sociable and comfortable and pleased with ourselves. We had come flushed with victory from Seaton, and everything pointed to a delightful game on the morrow. There were no signs of rain. It had been a beautiful evening, and the glass was going up. It was pretty to see the faith we had in that glass. On our last visit, a year back, the thing had prophesied much rain, and we had been unanimous in pointing out that of course no sane man ever thought of trusting a barometer. Geake had just finished telling us, at considerable length, how he once made twenty-three not out in a house match at Malvern (which none of us believed) when Sharples strolled in. He wore a cynical smile