_0485.jpg)
CHAPTER XII
VILLAGE CRICKET
By C. F. Wood
Constant readers of the Pall Mall Gazette will not have missed a most amusing article on "Yokels at Cricket," which appeared over the initials "R. E. M." during the summer of this year of grace 1902. With a felicity of exaggeration which would do credit to Mark Twain, the writer describes his experiences on a pitch where the blocks were too large to begin with, and too numerous; where all that could be said of the fielding was that the men in the lost-ball region did their ferreting well; and where the fast ball shot, rose five feet, and shot again. Sometimes, he pathetically adds, the five-feet rise came last.
361
