The Hampdenshire Wonder | Page 5

the sturdy, freckled, sandy-haired boy who used to go round with the
morning and evening papers; the boy who was to change the fortunes
of a county.
Ginger was phenomenally thorough in all he undertook. It was one of
the secrets of his success. It was this thoroughness that kept him
engaged in his mother's little business until he was seventeen. Up to
that age he never found time for cricket--he certainly had remarkable
and very unusual qualities.
It was sheer chance, apparently, that determined his choice of a career.
He had walked into Stoke-Underhill to deliver a parcel, and on his way
back his attention was arrested by the sight of a line of vehicles drawn
up to the boarded fencing that encloses the Ailesworth County Ground.
The occupants of these vehicles were standing up, struggling to catch a
sight of the match that was being played behind the screen erected to
shut out non-paying sightseers. Among the horses' feet, squirming
between the spokes of wheels, utterly regardless of all injury, small
boys glued their eyes to knot-holes in the fence, while others climbed
surreptitiously, and for the most part unobserved, on to the backs of
tradesmen's carts. All these individuals were in a state of tremendous
excitement, and even the policeman whose duty it was to move them
on, was so engrossed in watching the game that he had disappeared
inside the turnstile, and had given the outside spectators full
opportunity for eleemosynary enjoyment.
That tarred fence has since been raised some six feet, and now encloses
a wider sweep of ground--alterations that may be classed among the

minor resolutions effected by the genius of that thick-set, fair-haired
youth of seventeen, who paused on that early September afternoon to
wonder what all the fuss was about. The Ailesworth County Ground
was not famous in those days; not then was accommodation needed for
thirty thousand spectators, drawn from every county in England to
witness the unparalleled.
Ginger stopped. The interest of the spectacle pierced his absorption in
the business he had in hand. Such a thing was almost unprecedented.
"What's up?" he asked of Puggy Phillips.
Puggy Phillips--hazarding his life by standing on the shiny, slightly
curved top of his butcher's cart--made no appropriate answer.
"Yah--ah--ah!" he screamed in ecstasy. "Oh! played! Pla-a-a-ayed!!"
Ginger wasted no more breath, but laid hold of the little brass rail that
encircled Puggy's platform, and with a sudden hoist that lifted the
shafts and startled the pony, raised himself to the level of a spectator.
"'Ere!" shouted the swaying, tottering Puggy. "What the ... are yer rup
to?"
The well-drilled pony, however, settled down again quietly to maintain
his end of the see-saw, and, finding himself still able to preserve his
equilibrium, Puggy instantly forgot the presence of the intruder.
"What's up?" asked Ginger again.
"Oh! Well 'it, well 'it!" yelled Puggy. "Oh! Gow on, gow on agen! Run
it aht. Run it ah-t."
Ginger gave it up, and turned his attention to the match.
It was not any famous struggle that was being fought out on the old
Ailesworth Ground; it was only second-class cricket, the deciding
match of the Minor Counties championship. Hampdenshire and
Oxfordshire, old rivals, had been neck-and-neck all through the season,

and, as luck would have it, the engagement between them had been the
last fixture on the card.
When Ginger rose to the level of spectator, the match was anybody's
game. Bobby Maisefield was batting. He was then a promising young
colt who had not earned a fixed place in the Eleven. Ginger knew him
socially, but they were not friends, they had no interests in common.
Bobby had made twenty-seven. He was partnered by old Trigson, the
bowler (he has been dead these eight years), whose characteristic score
of "Not out...0," is sufficiently representative of his methods.
It was the fourth innings, and Hampdenshire, with only one more
wicket to fall, still required nineteen runs to win. Trigson could be
relied upon to keep his wicket up, but not to score. The hopes of
Ailesworth centred in the ability of that almost untried colt Bobby
Maisefield--and he seemed likely to justify the trust reposed in him. A
beautiful late cut, that eluded third man and hit the fence with a
resounding bang, nearly drove Puggy wild with delight.
"Only fifteen more," he shouted. "Oh! Played; pla-a-a-yed!"
But as the score crept up, the tensity grew. As each ball was delivered,
a chill, rigid silence held the onlookers in its grip. When Trigson, with
the field collected round him, almost to be covered with a sheet,
stonewalled the most tempting lob, the click of the ball on his bat was
an intrusion on the stillness. And always it was followed by a deep
breath of relief that sighed round