Anne's Terrible Good Nature (Collection)/Roderick's Pros

upon a time there was a little boy of ten, who bowled out. This little boy's name was Roderick Bulstrode (or Bulstrode is the name that we will give him here), and he lived in St. John's Wood, in one of the houses whose gardens join Lord's. His father played for the M.C.C. a good deal, and practised in the nets almost every day, to the bowling of various professionals, or pros., as they are called for short, but chiefly to that of Tom Stick; and in the summer Roderick was more often at Lord's than not.

How it came about that Roderick bowled C. B. Fry was this way. Middlesex were playing Sussex, and Mr. Fry went to the nets early to practise, and Roderick's father bowled to him and let Roderick have the ball now and then. And whether it was that Mr. Fry was not thinking, or was looking another way, or was simply very good-natured, I don't know, but one of Roderick's sneaks got under his bat and hit the stumps. (They were not sneaks, you must understand, because he wanted to bowl sneaks, but because he was not big enough to bowl any other way for 22 yards. He was only ten.) Roderick thus did that day what no one else could do, for Mr. Fry went in and made 143 not out, in spite of all the efforts of Albert Trott and Tarrant and J. T. Hearne.

Roderick's bedroom walls had been covered with portraits of cricketers for years, but after he bowled out C. B. Fry he took away a lot of them and made an open space with the last picture postcard of Mr. Fry right in the middle of it, and underneath, on the mantelpiece, he put the ball he had bowled him with, which his father gave him, under a glass shade. And other little St. John's Wood boys, friends of Roderick's from the Abbey Road, and Hamilton Terrace, and Loudoun Road, and that very attractive red-brick village with a green of its own just off the Avenue Road, used to come and see it, and stand in front of it and hold their breath, rather like little girls looking at a new baby.

Roderick also had a "Cricketers' Birthday Book," so that when he came down to breakfast he used to say, "Tyldesley's thirty-five to-day," "Hutchings is twenty-four," and so on. And he knew the initials of every first-class amateur and the Christian name of every pro.

That was not Roderick's only cricketing triumph. It is true that he had never succeeded in bowling out any other really swell batsman, but he had shaken hands with Sammy Woods and J. R. Mason, and one day Lord Hawke took him by both shoulders and lifted him to one side, saying: "Now then, Tommy, out of the way." But these were only chance acquaintances. His real cricketing friend was Tom Stick, the ground bowler.

Tom Stick came from Devonshire, which is a county without a first-class eleven that plays the M.C.C. in August, and he lived in a little street off Lisson Grove, where he kept a bird-fancier's shop. For most professional cricketers, you know, are something else as well, or they would not be able to live in the winter. Many of them make cricket-bats, many keep inns, many are gardeners. I know one who is a picture-framer, and another an organist, while George Hirst, who is the greatest of them all, makes toffee. Well, Tom Stick was a bird-fancier, with a partner named Dick Crawley, who used to mind the shop when Tom had to be at Lord's bowling to gentlemen, Roderick's father among them, or playing against Haileybury or Rugby or wherever he was sent to do all the hard work and go in last.

Roderick's father was very fond of Tom and was quite happy to know that Roderick was with him, so that Roderick not only used to join Tom at Lord's, but also at the shop off Lisson Grove, where he often helped in cleaning out the cages and feeding the birds and teaching the bullfinches to whistle, and was very good friends also with certain puppies and rabbits. His own dog, a fox-terrier named "Sinhji," had come from Tom.

Tom used to bowl to Roderick in the mornings before the gentlemen arrived for their practice, and he taught him to hold his bat straight and not slope it, and to keep his feet still and not draw them away when the ball was coming (which are the two most important things in batting), and it was he who stopped Roderick from carrying an autograph-book about and worrying the cricketers for their signatures. In fact, Tom was a kind of nurse to Roderick, and they were so much together that, whereas Tom was known to Roderick's small friends as "Roddy's Pro," Roderick was known to Tom's friends as "Sticky's Shadow."

Now it happened that last summer Roderick's father had been making a great many runs for the M.C.C. in one of their tours. (Roderick did not see him, for he had to stay at home and do his lessons; but his father sent him a telegram after each innings.) Mr. Bulstrode (as we are calling him) batted so well, indeed, that when he returned to London he was asked to play for Middlesex against Yorkshire on the following Monday, to take the place of one of the regular eleven who was ill; and you may be sure he said yes, for, although he was now thirty-two, this was the first time he had ever been asked to play for his county.

Roderick, you may be equally sure, was also pleased; and when his father suddenly said to him, "Would you like to come with me?" his excitement was almost too great to bear.

"And Tom too?" he asked, after a minute or so.

"Yes, Tom's going," said his father. "He's going to field if anyone is hurt or has to leave early. But if he's not wanted he will look after you."

"Hurray!" said Roderick. "I know what I shall do. I shall score every run and keep the bowling analysis too."

The train left St. Pancras on the Sunday afternoon, and that in itself was an excitement, for Roderick had never travelled on Sunday before; but before that had come the rapture of packing his bag, which on this occasion was not an ordinary one, but an old cricket-bag of his father's, which he begged for, in which were not only his sponge and collars and other necessary things, but his flannels and his bat and pads.

This bag he insisted upon carrying himself all along the platform, and, as several of the Middlesex team were also on their way to the train at the same moment, the presence of so small a cricketer in their midst made a great sensation among the porters.

"My word!" said one, "Yorkshire will have to look out this time."

"Who's the giant," asked another, "walking just behind Albert Trott? I shouldn't like to be in when he bowled his fastest."

But Roderick was unconscious of any laughter. He was the proudest boy in London, although his arm, it is true, was beginning to ache horribly. But when, as he was climbing into the carriage, the guard lifted him up and called him "Prince Run-get-simply," he joined in the fun.



It was a deliriously happy journey, for all the cricketers were very nice to him, and Mr. Warner talked about Australia, and Mr. Bosanquet showed him how he held the ball to make it break from the leg when the batsman thought it was going to break from the off, and at Nottingham Mr. Douglas bought him a bun and a banana. They got to Sheffield just before eight, and Roderick went to bed very soon after, in a little bed in his father's room in the hotel.

The first thing Roderick did the next morning was to buy a scoring-book and a pencil, and then he and his father explored Sheffield a little before it was time to go to the ground at Bramall Lane and get some practice.

The people clustered all round and in front of the nets and watched the batsmen, and now and then they were nearly killed, as always happens before a match. They pointed out the cricketers to each other.

"There's Warner," they said. "That's Bosanquet—the tall one." "Where's Trott? Why, there, bowling at Warner. Good old Alberto!" and so on.

"Who's the man in the end net?" Roderick heard some one ask.

"I don't know. One of Middlesex's many new men, I suppose," said the other.

"But he can hit a bit, can't he?" the first man said, as Roderick's father stepped out to a ball and banged it half-way across the ground.

Roderick was very proud, and he felt that the time had come to make his father known. "That's Bulstrode," he said.

"Oh, that's Bulstrode, is it?" said the second man. "I've heard of him. He makes lots of runs on the M.C.C. tours. But I guess Georgy 'll get him."

"Who is Georgy?" asked Roderick.

"Georgy—why, where do you come from? Fancy being in Sheffield and asking who Georgy is. Georgy is Georgy Hirst, of course."

Roderick walked back to the pavilion with his father very proudly. "You'll have to be very careful how you play Hirst," he said.

"I shall," said his father; "but why?"

"Because the men were saying he's going to get you." Mr. Bulstrode laughed; but he thought it very likely too.

I'm not going to tell you all about the match, for it lasted three days, and was very much like other matches. Roderick had a corner seat in the pavilion, where he could see everything, and for the first day he scored every run and kept the analysis right through. This included his father's innings, which lasted, alas! far too short a time, for, after making four good hits to the boundary, he was caught close in at what was called silly mid-on off—what bowler do you think?—George Hirst.

But the next day Roderick gave up work, because he wanted to see more of Tom, and Tom made room for him in the professionals' box while Yorkshire were in, and he saw all the wonderful men—quite close too—Tunnicliffe and Denton and Hirst—and even talked with them. Hirst sat right in front of the box, with his brown sunburned arms on the ledge, and his square, jolly, sunburned face on his arms, and said funny things about the play in broad Yorkshire; and now and then he would say something to Roderick. And then suddenly down went a wicket, and Hirst got up to go in.

"Give me a wish for luck," he said to Roddy.

"I wish my father may catch you out," said Roddy; "but not until," he added, "you have made a lot of runs."

"If he does," said Hirst, "I'll give thee some practice to-morrow morning."

Poor Roddy, this was almost too much. It is bad enough to watch your favourites batting at any time, for every ball may be the last; but it is terrible when you equally want two people to bring something off—for Roddy wanted Hirst (whom he now adored) to make a good innings, and, at the same time, he wanted his father to catch Hirst out.

Hirst was not out when it was time for lunch, and so Roderick was able to tell his father all about it.

"What's this, Hirst?" said Mr. Bulstrode, when the teams were being photographed. "Give me a chance, and let me see if I can hold it."

Hirst laughed, and when he laughs it is like a sunset in fine weather. "I have a spy round to see where thee're standing every over," he said, "and that's where I'll never knock it."

"But what about my boy's practice?" Mr. Bulstrode replied.

"Ah, we'll see about that," said the Yorkshireman.

But, as a matter of fact, Roderick got his practice according to the bargain, for, as it happened, it was Mr. Bulstrode who caught Hirst, at third man.

I need hardly tell you that Roderick dreamed that night. His sleep was full of Hirsts, all jolly and all hitting catches which his father buttered. But in the morning, when he knew how true his luck was, he was almost too happy. Hirst was as good as his word, and they practised in the nets together for nearly half an hour, and Roderick nearly bowled him twice.

In Middlesex's next innings Roderick's father made thirty-five, all of which Roderick scored with the greatest care; but the match could not be finished owing to a very heavy shower, and so this innings did not matter very much one way or the other, except that it made Mr. Bulstrode's place safe for another match.

Of that match I am not going to tell; but I have perhaps said enough to show you how exceedingly delightful it must be to have a father who plays for his county.