Page:Cricket, by WG Grace.djvu/328

 and is just as successful in that position. No safer pair of hands can be desired, and no more willing worker ever played in an eleven. He bowls round-arm, medium-pace.

We have played side by side in more matches than I can remember: first for Mr. Fitzgerald's team in Canada and America; then for Gentlemen v. Players, Kent and Gloucestershire v. England, England v. Australia and other representative matches. He was the heart and soul of the Canadian trip, and we were the closest of friends from beginning to end of it; for we had two things in common our sailing and speaking capabilities. We never sailed but we were ill together, and we never got on our legs to attempt a speech without wishing we had never been born! When I listened to his eloquent remarks at Canterbury at the end of 1889 season, I could not help recalling certain efforts in the Canadian trip, and feeling keenly how I had neglected my opportunities, while he had cultivated his. But he has had many long innings at it since, and gone forward; while mine have been short, and I very much fear I have gone back.

No cricketer is quicker to congratulate a comrade on a fine performance. In the Kent v. Gloucestershire match at Clifton, in 1887, when I scored 100 twice in a match, the second time in my career, he was the first to applaud. A little before the time for drawing stumps on the third day, when I was about twenty runs short of the number to complete the feat, and the regular Kent bowlers had failed to dislodge me, he put on underhand bowling. That had no effect; and, knowing the match could not be lost, he kindly allowed the bowler to continue an over or two longer so that I might accomplish my end. He could easily have made another change, which might have prevented me from doing it before time expired.