The Hampdenshire Wonder | Page 6

the ring like a faint wind through a
plantation of larches. When Bobby scored, the tumult broke out like a
crash of thunder, but it subsided again, echoless, to that intense silence
so soon as the ball was "dead."
Curiously, it was not Bobby who made the winning hit but Trigson.
"One to tie, two to win," breathed Puggy as the field changed over, and
it was Trigson who had to face the bowling. The suspense was torture.
Oxford had put on their fast bowler again, and Trigson, intimidated,
perhaps, did not play him with quite so straight a bat as he had opposed
to the lob-bowler. The ball hit Trigson's bat and glanced through the
slips. The field was very close to the wicket, and the ball was travelling

fast. No one seemed to make any attempt to stop it. For a moment the
significance of the thing was not realised; for a moment only, then
followed uproar, deafening, stupendous.
Puggy was stamping fiercely on the top of his cart; the tears were
streaming down his face; he was screaming and yelling incoherent
words. He was representative of the crowd. Thus men shouted and
stamped and cried when news came of the relief of Kimberley, or when
that false report of victory was brought to Paris in the August of 1870...
The effect upon Ginger was a thing apart. He did not join in the fierce
acclamation; he did not wait to see the chairing of Bobby and Trigson.
The greatness of Stott's character, the fineness of his genius is
displayed in his attitude towards the dramatic spectacle he had just
witnessed.
As he trudged home into Ailesworth his thoughts found vent in a
muttered sentence which is peculiarly typical of the effect that had been
made upon him.
"I believe I could have bowled that chap," he said.
III
In writing a history of this kind, a certain licence must be claimed. It
will be understood that I am filling certain gaps in the narrative with
imagined detail. But the facts are true. My added detail is only intended
to give an appearance of life and reality to my history. Let me,
therefore, insist upon one vital point I have not been dependent on
hearsay for one single fact in this story. Where my experience does not
depend upon personal experience, it has been received from the
principals themselves. Finally, it should be remembered that when I
have, imaginatively, put words into the mouths of the persons of this
story, they are never essential words which affect the issue. The
essential speeches are reported from first-hand sources. For instance,
Ginger Stott himself has told me on more than one occasion that the
words with which I closed the last section, were the actual words
spoken by him on the occasion in question. It was not until six years

after the great Oxfordshire match that I myself first met the man, but
what follows is literally true in all essentials.
There was a long, narrow strip of yard, or alley, at the back of Mrs.
Stott's paper-shop, a yard that, unfortunately, no longer exists. It has
been partly built over, and another of England's memorials has thus
been destroyed by the vandals of modern commerce...
This yard was fifty-three feet long, measuring from Mrs. Stott's back
door to the door of the coal-shed, which marked the alley's extreme
limit. This measurement, an apparently negligible trifle, had an
important effect upon Stott's career. For it was in this yard that he
taught himself to bowl, and the shortness of the pitch precluded his
taking any run. From those long studious hours of practice he emerged
with a characteristic that was--and still remains--unique. Stott never
took more than two steps before delivering the ball; frequently he
bowled from a standing position, and batsmen have confessed that of
all Stott's puzzling mannerisms, this was the one to which they never
became accustomed. S. R. L. Maturin, the finest bat Australia ever sent
to this country, has told me that to this peculiarity of delivery he
attributed his failure ever to score freely against Stott. It completely
upset one's habit of play, he said: one had no time to prepare for the
flight of the ball; it came at one so suddenly. Other bowlers have since
attempted some imitation of this method without success. They had not
Stott's physical advantages.
Nevertheless, the shortness of that alley threw Stott back for two years.
When he first emerged to try conclusions on the field, he found his
length on the longer pitch utterly unreliable, and the effort necessary to
throw the ball another six yards at first upset his slowly acquired
methods.
It was not until he was twenty years old that Ginger Stott played in his